


Won't Back Down

by StilesBastille24



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: Cannon Typical Violence, F/M, Helping Kyle become a person again, Madison does crappy things, Misty & Zoe friendship, Misty lives, Zoe & Kyle are meant to be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-07-01 11:35:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 38,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15773307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StilesBastille24/pseuds/StilesBastille24
Summary: When Zoe leaves the green house with Kyle a heavy weight around her shoulder, she’s sure this is the right choice. She’s not trying to bring Kyle back to life, not this time. She’s trying to help the boy she loves learn to be alive again.





	1. Prologue

Things weren’t right. Nothing was right. And every time Zoe tried to make things better, they only seemed to get worse. The Coven. Kyle. Nothing was going right. 

Kyle. Dark skies and rolling thunder, that’s what she had created when she and Madison brought Kyle back. Zoe had to do it. Zoe knew she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t at least try to bring Kyle back. He hadn’t deserved to be killed that night. He was – he was so alive. So full of life and kindness.

Charlie had been her first semi-serious boyfriend. Serious in the way that they had fun together and she was ready to go all the way with him. She and Charlie had both had seventh period English. They’d been assigned a project together on the class’s Jane Eyre unit. From there they had just fallen in together. Exchanging hallway make outs and inappropriately placed hands in the back seats of used cars. 

But Kyle? In less time than the length of her seventh period English class, Kyle had created a whole image of a person. He was honest and open. Too kind to be in a frat; too smart to fit in with kids who had never even heard the word ‘scholarship’ in relation to their college tuition. 

So in under an hour, Zoe had fallen in love with a boy she knew she could never be with. Not with the death curse lying in wait between her legs. But in the end, she hadn’t even needed to touch him to be the reason he died. 

In that moment, watching as the bus flipped over in the air, Zoe wondered if everything in her life was cursed. If that’s what it meant to have unnatural powers, to be a witch. Madison had been hideously raped, Kyle had been killed, Zoe had been exiled from her family. All because of a power lying dormant until she had started fooling around with Charlie Henderson. 

So naturally, when Madison offered to try a spell to bring Kyle back to life, Zoe had seen it as a chance to make things right. To unweave the dark spell that seemed to hang heavy over her life. She should have known it could only make things unimaginably worse. Starting with sewing his body back together. 

Zoe didn’t know what she had been thinking. Didn’t know why it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Any way to bring Kyle back, that had been the only part that mattered. And bring him back they had. Only not like either one of them had imagined. 

Kyle, sweet, beautiful, and kind, had come back a monster. His body refusing to move as one, as if each limb knew it didn’t belong to the one it was attached to. His language disintegrated to grunts, shouts, and empty silences. And his mind, locked far away beneath the chaos engulfing him. 

So Zoe had tried again to make things right. Had taken him to his mother because who better to put Kyle back together than the woman who had brought him into this world? Another mistake. Another horrible blood red stain to adorn Zoe’s growing legacy of death. 

First Charlie, then the monster who had raped Madison, then the coroner, and then Kyle’s mother.

Staring into Kyle’s blood stained face, Zoe couldn’t even see the Kyle she had meet anymore. She could only see those scars, the ones bright red and sharp against Kyle’s deathly pallor. She had brought something back to life, but it wasn’t Kyle. Kyle was dead and now she was dragging around a distorted nightmare version of a man. One whose only coherent function was murder. 

So Zoe had tried again to make things right. With rat poison. She wasn’t sure she could have gone through with it. Not because she thought the shape she brought back deserved to live after killing two innocent people, but because that shape looked like Kyle. And Zoe? She was still very much in love with the memory of Kyle. 

But when she got back to the bathroom, the decision was out of her hands. The thing that wasn’t Kyle had escaped, perhaps sensing the death clinging to Zoe’s aura. And Zoe had let him escape. Clearly, making things right was one thing Zoe was not able to do. She only made them worse each time she tried. So she went back to the Academy. Didn’t mention the mess she had made to anyone. Focused her attention instead on a problem she could solve, rather than fix. Finding Madison. 

Naturally, that went as disastrously wrong as much as it went right. She did find Madison. As a corpse. And only after agreeing to free the spirit of a serial killer. But this time, Zoe decided to chalk up the Axeman’s release to the inevitability of the curse that was being a witch. The only part that mattered was that Zoe had found Madison and she was going to bring Madison back. Correctly this time. Which was why she needed Misty. 

Getting to Misty’s cabin was a true commitment. Zoe drove the hour it took to get there with the windows down, letting the whine of the wind be her only reprieve from her thoughts. Thoughts that firmly shoved Kyle’s continuing disappearance into a corner of her mind so dark she began to forget about him. Instead, she focused on Madison. 

The first friend she’d had in years. She had acquaintances at her old school. Some of them her own from sharing classes over the years. More of them friends of Charlie’s who felt obliged to be nice to Zoe since she was dating their friend. But a friend who drags her to ill-advised parties, who sneaks around a house of witches with her, who shares a powerful secret? Madison and Madison alone. 

Zoe parked down the lone dirt lane that ended abruptly at a swamp filled with alligators. Zoe got out of the car and turned left. She wandered through the tall grass and gnarled trees, counting the minutes until she hit thirty. Then she started to look at the ground for the barely visible trail that led to Misty’s cabin. It took another five minutes to find the trail, but once she did, she was able to get moving more quickly. Another twenty minutes and the cabin came into view. Zoe restrained herself from running the rest of the way. 

It turned out she should have run. It might have saved Misty’s beloved Stevie Nicks. But Zoe didn’t run and then she was standing with her arms wrapped around the very naked and wet shape of Kyle. Except there were bigger things happening than her resurrected beau’s sudden reappearance. Madison needed Zoe and Zoe was going to do things right this time. Misty could bring Madison back and she could bring Madison back right. Not like Kyle.

~*~*~*~

That night, Zoe feels the scales are beginning to balance. She brought Madison back for the right reasons and she brought her back right, with Misty’s help. The same cannot be said for Kyle, who isn’t making any discernible progress towards become anything resembling a true person.

Chained in the green house, he howls and cries, clawing desperately at his mismatching body parts. He knows. He knows he’s wrong. Zoe doesn’t know if he understands that he’s a murderer too, but it doesn’t really matter in the end. Zoe knows, and that’s enough for her to know that Kyle wouldn’t want to stay this way. Not the real Kyle. 

So when she comes into the green house with the gun, she’s sure this is the right choice. She’s not fixing Kyle, not this time. She’s solving a problem. The problem of a monster with the face of the boy she loves. Except it all falls to shit the second Kyle grabs the gun. 

Because it turns out Kyle isn’t the only monster in the room. Zoe is too. She can’t let him go. She can’t let anything horrible happen to him again. He can’t die again. Not again when it will be her fault both times. So she lurches for the gun, risks her own life to save his. 

And when she collapses around him, arms pulling him in, trying to absorb his pain, she promises herself she will solve this problem too. The problem of how to help Kyle learn to be alive again.


	2. Blood Magic

She leads Kyle upstairs, chains him in the spare room next to the one she shares with Madison. There are a lot of spare rooms in the Academy now. In the room there’s a bed with clean sheets, a window that graces the pristine white walls with moonlight, and a small attached bathroom. This one doesn’t have a fire place like Zoe’s, but it still has a bathtub. 

Kyle groans as he cowers against the corner of the room. His chain is pulled long. She attached it to the bed, which won’t stop Kyle if he really wants to break free, but she’s banking on him wanting to stay more than he wants to leave. Zoe drops down on her knees next to him, pushing up the chains on his left wrist to rub at where his skin is chaffed red.

“I’m really sorry about the chains, Kyle,” she says. “But I’m trying to keep you safe. I know I’m not doing the best job, and I’m sorry for that too.”

His eyes scramble wildly across the room, finally coming to settle on her, then skitter away again. He whines low and upset and Zoe’s heart hurts. She caused this pain and she wishes nothing more than that she could take it away. 

“We’re going to figure this out, I promise.” She holds his hand gently in hers. 

Kyle seizes on her touch, clamping onto her hand with his long fingers. Fingers that were never his before. Zoe lifts his hand to her face, making sure his eyes follow the movement. 

She presses a kiss to the top of his hand and Kyle cries out like he’s been burned. He jerks his arm back. Shakes it angrily, lunging away from her and slamming his body into the wall. Zoe falls back, scooting a safe distance away from him as he works through this spike in his emotions.

“It’s okay,” she tells him, pitching her voice quiet and soothing. “It’s okay.”

He negates this, crying no, over and over. He thrashes the hand she held against the wall. Then he curls his fingers into his palms, nails twisting into his pale skin. Zoe reaches out again, holding tight when she grasps his hand in hers. 

“It’s okay,” she says again, leaning forward until she press her lips against the palm that wasn’t his before but is now. Zoe uses both hands to cup his hand around her cheek. “I like this part of you,” she tells him. 

Kyle’s eyes are wide and disbelieving as he watches her raptly. He whines after a moment, pulling away slightly. When all Zoe does is press his hand more firmly to her cheek, Kyle’s shoulders relax. 

Zoe nods. “It’s okay,” she repeats. “This hand is a part of you. I like this part of you. I like it because it’s your hand.” She slides his hand around to her lips and kisses his palm again. “I like all of you,” she promises. 

Kyle relaxes against the wall until he isn’t squeezing himself into it but resting his weight along it. Zoe relaxes with him, moving into the space on his right, her knees tucked up to her chest and his hand still held softly against her cheek. 

“We’re going to figure this out, Kyle. I’m going to help you. And we’re going to be okay, both of us.”

Kyle makes a groan that could be agreement or confusion, but his head tilts sideways and comes to rest against the top of hers. It’s progress. 

Kyle stutters to sleep, twitchy and gasping every few minutes until he eventually stills, his head on Zoe’s shoulder. Zoe realizes she’s going to be spending the night cramped in the corner on the floor, but if that’s what it takes for Kyle to feel safe, then she’s willing to make the sacrifice. 

She must drift off herself because she wakes to Kyle screaming, his eyes shut tight, every muscle in his body sharp with tension. It’s a minute until Zoe figures out Kyle is having a nightmare. For all that is trapped in his mind, his words, thoughts, and feelings, the curse of Zoe’s magic is still strong enough to grant him the ability to dream. 

Zoe cups his face in her hands, gently pressing against his cheeks as she calls his name, quietly but firmly. 

When his eyes flash open, he lashes out, throwing Zoe into the bed where she crashes with a gasp of pain. Awake enough now to realize what he’s done, Kyle huddles against the wall, crying sadly and smacking himself in the head. 

Zoe crawls back to him, ignoring the slight twist of pain where her back connected with the metal bed frame. “It’s okay,” she tells him, reaching up and gently prying his open hand away from his forehead. 

Kyle groans, “No, no, no. Kyle, no.” 

“Hey,” Zoe says, sitting up on her knees. She presses both of Kyle’s hands to the fabric of her black sweatpants. His fingers curl into the fabric, nails scratching through to leave red lines on her skin. 

Zoe runs her fingers through the soft tangles of Kyle’s curls. “You’re okay,” she tells Kyle. “I’m okay. It was an accident, right?” 

“No, no, Kyle,” he moans, eyes frantic on her face, darting back and forth from her to the room as if even in the dark there are too many things to focus on. 

“You were having a nightmare.” Zoe rubs her thumbs against his temples. Kyle relaxes slightly into the touch. “But you’re okay now. I’m here with you.” 

Abruptly, Kyle pushes out of Zoe’s grasp. He leaves her with her hands still in the air where his face was moments before. Then he rolls up the sleeve of the worn out plaid shirt and jabs repeatedly at an ugly tattoo of a shamrock. 

“No, Kyle, no, Kyle,” Kyle shouts, getting more agitated with every repetition. His body starts to rock back and forth. The skin of his arm turns red as he continues to jab accusingly at the tattoo. 

And that’s when it clicks for Zoe. No Kyle. That missing comma making all the difference. This part of Kyle. This arm, this tattoo. They are not Kyle. 

“Oh god, Kyle,” she says, curling into him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This is my fault, Kyle.” She presses her hand over the tattoo. “My fault, not yours. You didn’t do anything wrong, Kyle, I did.” 

He’s struggling against her, but not like he wants to escape her. He struggles as if he wants to escape his own skin. 

“The accident,” Zoe starts, feeling a pit form her in her stomach. She puts slight distance between them, enough to gain Kyle’s attention. 

His dark eyes dart to her face as he continues to groan out, “No Kyle.”

“When Madison flipped the bus, everybody on it got hurt. Bad, Kyle. Really bad. When I found you – “ she breaks off, her fingers reaching up to trace the scar on his neck. “I found parts of you.”

Kyle recoils, his forehead falling to his knees. His litany of ‘no’ grows disconsolate. 

“Everything that happened from there, it’s no excuse, but I wanted you back, Kyle. I was selfish, and I told myself I was doing the right thing. Because I wanted to fix things. I wanted to be in a world where you were alive, so I bent the world to my will and I brought you back, however I could.” Zoe isn’t sure how much of her confession Kyle can understand. 

She doesn’t know if it’s only his speech that is impaired. If what ever is wrong extends beyond to all of his mental faculties. But when they figure this out, she’ll confess again. Over and over until he understands and he can forgive her. 

“Kyle?” she asks. 

“No.” He’s crying now, soft huffing of breath that breaks her heart. With trembling fingers, he reaches down and drags up the cuff of his jeans. Spiky black lines of another tattoo appear. “No Kyle.”

Zoe bites her lip, not sure how to respond. She wants there to be something she can do to make this better. Her mind scatters over anything that can help bring him back to her. Reaching her hand to the right, she calls for the knife she carries in her saddle bag. 

It skitters across the floor and comes to rest at her fingertips. She picks it up and Kyle jerks back from her, his cries growing louder. “It’s okay,” she promises. She lifts the knife, letting him see it shine in the moonlight. 

Then she rolls up the sleeve on her left arm. She presses the tip of the knife just below her elbow. Kyle watches her warily, tears smeared down his pale cheeks. Zoe careful draws an inch gash on her arm, deep enough to scar. 

Kyle screams, lunging forward towards the knife. Zoe holds out her hand, palm towards him and keeps him back against the wall with the same well of power she used to call for the knife. “It’s okay,” she says again. 

Zoe holds the knife toward Kyle. “Do you trust me?”

Kyle’s eyes are wide with fear but he stops struggling against her invisible hold. Zoe motions for his arm, the one with the shamrock. Uncertainly, Kyle offers it to her. Zoe presses the flat of the knife to the tattoo. “Okay?”

He blinks at her. Then his eyes move to the line of blood on her arm, it’s sliding down to drip to the floor. Kyle looks back to the shamrock on his arm. Then he nods, a swift jerk of his chin. 

Zoe carefully pushes the knife into his skin, marking him with an identical cut. “Kyle,” she says, setting the knife down behind her, then pressing her fingers to his new wound. “Kyle’s arm.” Zoe presses her blood tinged fingers to the cut on her arm. “Zoe’s arm.”

In a sudden move, Kyle kicks out his right leg toward her. “Kyle. Kyle – “ His brow furrows and he slaps himself in the head. 

“Kyle’s leg,” Zoe finishes for him, pulling his hand away from his forehead with her clean hand. “Okay,” she agrees. 

She picks up the knife again, the black handle turning red under her touch. First, she pulls off her shoe and rolls down her sock. Zoe looks at Kyle as she draws a line half way around her ankle. Kyle watches her intently. When she’s done, Kyle tugs up the cuff of his jean.

Zoe reenacts her ceremony. This time, with the blood fresh on his leg, Kyle smears his fingers in it. “Kyle,” he tells her.

“Kyle,” she agrees. She presses her fingers into the blood of her ankle. “Zoe.”

“Kyle. Z-Zoe.” Kyle aligns their hands. Zoe places her hand against his, their fingers slick with their blood. “Kyle, Zoe,” he whispers, his voice rough and high, so unlike the way he spoke before. 

With her free hand, Zoe sends the dirty knife behind her. Then she cups her hand around Kyle’s neck and pulls his head down to her lap. She runs her fingers through his blonde curls. “Sleep, Kyle.”

He nestles into her, keeping their bloody hands tight together. It’s a dangerous game she’s playing, Zoe knows that. But she also knows Kyle is worth it.


	3. Black Page

When Zoe wakes up, Kyle is still sleeping. She gently eases his head onto a pillow she takes down from the bed. Then she leaves him, still chained to the bed frame, and goes to talk to Cordelia. 

Cordelia is on the grounds, sitting on a bench beneath one of the crooked trees that grows on the Academy property. When she heares Zoe, she stands up.

“Magic isn’t a game,” Cordelia says. “When people die, sometimes it’s better to let that be the end.”

Zoe tugs nervously at the sides of her black skirt. “They didn’t deserve to die.”

Cordelia sighs. “I’m not your Supreme, I can’t tell you what I think you should do. Or how you should use your powers. I can tell you that your powers are growing quickly and strongly.” She sits back down on the metal bench. 

Zoe takes this as an invitation to join her. “I don’t care about my powers,” she says, and it’s true. Of the four of them, Zoe knows she is the one least interested in her abilities as a witch. Since arriving at the Academy, it always seemed like there was something more important for her to be focused on. 

Cordelia reaches out and runs a strand of Zoe’s straight hair between her fingers. “And I believe that’s what makes you so powerful. You treat your powers as a part of who you are, not the sole focus of your being.. So ask me what you came to ask.”

“What can I do to help him?” Zoe asks, her words rushed because she’s holding out hope that there are just things she doesn’t know yet that could help Kyle get better. 

“Since you’ve told me nothing about him, I’m going to ask that you let me hold your hand.” Cordelia turns her own hand palm up.  
Without hesitation, Zoe places her own hand trustingly in Cordelia’s. 

“Oh, Zoe,” Coredlia says softly. 

“I know.” The words break as she says them and Zoe pulls her hand sharply from Cordelia’s grasp, afraid of what else she will see. The murder of the frat boy? Charlie’s murder? 

“I see Madison was eager to help you. Try her powers out. But you should not dabble in things you haven’t studied. Perhaps that is the fault of Academy for not having taught you better.” 

“It’s done now, though. I need help with what to do next,” Zoe says, not wanting to be reprimanded for something she can’t take back. Something she’s not even certain now that she would take back if she could. 

“I’m not going to be able to help you the way you want me to. I don’t know enough about the magic involved in healing the mind.” Cordelia places her hand gently on Zoe’s elbow, an act of commiseration. 

It’s the last thing that Zoe wants to hear, but she had been preparing herself for the worst, and this is it. What her magic has done cannot be fixed by it. But she has a second plan. “Alright, then I won’t use magic,” she tells Cordelia. “I’ll teach him. I’ll help him relearn the things he’s lost.”

Cordelia smiles wanly at her. “You have my support if you need it.”

“Thank you, Cordelia.”

As she walks back toward the house, Zoe looks up at the windows. There is no discernible movement in Kyle’s room. Time to start.

~*~*~*~ 

By the time she has the flashcards done, she’s half worried it’s a stupid idea. It’s not like he’ll be able to read the words on them.. She’s not even certain he’ll remember what any of the foods on them are. Still, it’s worth a try and it is certainly better than doing nothing for him.

When Zoe gets to his room, the first thing she does is remove the chains from his wrists. Kyle looks at her astounded. “I want to trust you,” she tells him. 

Kyle doesn’t respond, just watches her as she sits down across from him. He’s huddled in on himself again. He always seems to be holding his body close, curled over it, as if he’s keeping his limbs together purely by force. 

“You need to be able to communicate what you need with me. When you’re hungry, when you’re tired, when you think you might do something bed. So we’re going to practice, okay?” She holds up her stack of flash cards. 

Kyle looks at them blankly. “Zoe.”

She smiles at him. “Yes, you and me. We’re going to work on this together.” 

He reaches toward her, fingering her hair the way he seems to like to do. 

Zoe holds up the first card. “Food,” she says. 

Kyle looks from the card to her. “F-f-oo-d.” The word is dragged out of him like a car going over a dirt road. Still, she’s incredibly proud of him for trying and succeeding. 

“Yeah, Kyle,” she beams. “Food.” She flips past the other food items, leaving them for later. Kyle is hardly reading for a mouthful like hamburger when food is a struggle. When she gets to bed, she holds it up. “Bed.”

His lips start to form the first letter, but before the sound even starts, he shouts and dashes the cards from her hands. He acts out, half stand and screaming. She grabs his shoulders, the flash cards spilling from her hand to land as mess on the hardwood. 

“Stu-stu-pid.” Kyle stutters, smacking himself. 

Zoe smiles, she can’t help it. Another word, formed all on his own. She lifts her hand to his face, her index finger gently tapping against his temple. “I know you’re not,” she says, smiling proudly at him, “everything you know, it’s just trapped up here. But we’re going to make this work.” 

He looks at her disbelievingly. His eyes dark pools of brown that she has the school girl thought of falling into. “You’re doing so well, Kyle,” she tells him, wishing he would believe her. 

Leaning back, she scoops the flashcards into a pile. Kyle looks at them with distaste. She’s not sure they’ll keep working with the flashcards if they make him miserable. She’ll find a different way. In the meantime, she gestures to the pile. “Which of these do you know, even if you can’t say them?”

Kyle glares at the cards, but after a moment, he starts to poke through them with one finger. As he goes, a small pile forms to the right. All the basic items; bed, shower, bathroom, sleep, eat, drink. The things that are more classified, hamburger, computer, phone, he pushes those to a pile on the left. 

“Okay,” Zoe nods. “That’s great.” She pulls Kyle up to his feet with her. With a gesture of her fingers, the pile on the right lifts neatly into her hand. “Keep these in your back pocket for now. When you need something, show me a card. Okay?”

Kyle nods, taking the cards from her and struggling to put them in the back pocket of his jeans. She can see the frustrating mounting on his face so she reaches out and does it for him. After, she reaches up and brushes the hair from his eyes. She smiles up at him. 

Kyle’s still visibly upset, but he steps closer to her. 

The moment is interrupted by Madison striding into the room. “Who’s the boy toy?” she asks, crossing to her bed and spreading out across it. 

Zoe stares at her. She can’t imagine a world in which Madison doesn’t know exactly who Kyle is. They sewed him back together. “You don’t remember him?”

“Should I?” Madison asks, clearly annoyed. 

“You killed him? I brought him back to life.”

Madison shifts her eyes to Kyle but doesn’t comment. “Cordelia wants to talk to you.”

Zoe perks up. Is it possible that Cordelia remembered something that might help Kyle? “Where is she?”

“In the office.”

Zoe looks back at Kyle. He’s looking between Madison and herself uncertainly. Zoe doesn’t want to leave him, not when they were just starting to make progress. But if Cordelia does know something . . .

“Go,” Maidson shoos. “I’ll look after the zombie.”

Zoe bristles at the name, but is thankful for the offer. “I’ll be back,” Zoe promises Kyle, squeezing his hand once before leaving the room.


	4. Funeral Dirge

What Cordelia reveals isn’t all the surprising, not if Zoe had really been looking for it. When has Fiona ever done anything good for anyone? Maybe Zoe didn’t suspect her of murder, but now that it has been said, she very vividly remembers Fiona telling her and Madison that the only thing they needed to be afraid of was her. 

Zoe’s trying to sort through it all as she heads back up to her room. If Fiona finds out about Misty, how Misty helped her bring back Madison, will that put Misty in danger? What will Fiona do when she finds out about Kyle? Will Fiona try to kill Madison again, now that she is back?

Pushing open the door, Zoe isn’t sure which problem to share with Madison first. But the sight beyond stops her dead in her tracks. Madison and Kyle. Kyle holding Madison up against the wardrobe as he fucks into her over and over again. Madison’s pleasure filled faces as her eyes meet Zoe’s across the room. 

For an instant, Zoe wishes she was as blind as Cordelia. Falling back from the door, Zoe turns and flees down the hallway.. She keeps running until she is two blocks away. She’s in the park, the one that is really a cemetery without gates. Zoe drags herself to a bench, claiming this small part of hallowed land for herself. She feels dirty. Filthy. Zoe scrubs at her arms, her breath coming short.

“Misty,” she calls desperately. “Misty, please!”

With a soft brush of air, Misty is right beside her. Her flowing dark purple dress smells like lilies as she presses against Zoe’s shoulder. “What’s wrong, darlin’?” 

There are words, trembling on the tip of her tongue. But surrounded by the dead and Misty, Zoe let’s herself cry. A few minutes of tears and gasping breaths. Misty pulls Zoe into her arms, resting her head on the crown of Zoe’s. Hushing softly in her lilting southern accent. 

When she collects herself, Zoe pulls back and pushes the hair from her face. “I feel so stupid,” she confesses to Misty’s brown leather boots. 

“Nonsense. There’s a lot of stupid in this world, but you’re not a part of it.” Misty runs her fingers through Zoe’s hair. “Tell me what happened.”

In the slight breeze, Zoe’s tears trail across her cheeks. She smudges them away with the cuffs of her sleeves. “I’m in love with him. Kyle, I mean. I loved him before and I think I even love who he is now."

Misty smiles, carefully tucking Zoe’s hair behind her ear. “I can’t see anything stupid about that. He likes you too, honey. I told you that” 

“No,” Zoe counters harshly. “No, he doesn’t.”

Misty tilts her head. “What happened to make you say that because it was only yesterday when I was watching him paw after you like a fresh born pup.” 

Zoe tells her, unable to help herself from including every sordid detail that is seared into her memory. And it just sounds so petty. Being upset about a boy when people are literally dying around her. 

Misty makes a face. “I told you we should have let her rot.”

“No,” Zoe protests, but she huffs a laugh, only Misty would be so brazen with her words. “She’s my friend and she looked – she looked happy. Madison told me she hasn’t felt anything since we brought her back.” 

“Uh-huh, a lot of people look happy when they’re making love. Doesn’t mean she had to pick your boy.”

“She doesn’t remember him. Or any of it, I think. Not the night at the party or what happened after.” Zoe squints up at Misty. The sun is forcing itself through the clouds, choosing this moment to be blindingly bright. Zoe wonders why the sun couldn’t have shown up to blind her when she walked in on Madison and Kyle. 

Misty twists sideways on the bench, pulling her knees up crisscrossed. “I told you she’d been dead for too long. Things start to ferment, if you will.” She taps Zoe on the nose like this will help her wise words sink in. “So what are we going to do about your little love triangle?”

“Nothing,” Zoe says, her voice gone flat. She’s not going to fight with Madison over Kyle. She wants Kyle to be happy, really. If he’s happy with Madison and Madison’s happy with him – 

Zoe breaks herself off from that train of thought. It’s too early for her to be feeling magnanimous about the situation. Right now she’s still in the guts twisting, heartbreaking stage. She’ll figure out a way to be okay with their situation later on.

Do you want to come back with me?” Misty offers, her eyes lighting up with excitement. “You could stay with me! I’ve got plenty of room.”

Zoe drops her head back against the bench. “Honestly, with everything going on at the Academy right now, I want to say yes. But I can’t. I made a promise to help Kyle.” 

Misty looks crestfallen but she doesn’t beg Zoe to come back with her. “You call me any time you need, yeah? I’m here for you. We belong together.”

“Thanks, Misty.” Zoe hugs her quickly, then stands up, fingers curling and biting into her palms. It’s time to face the music, even if it’s a funeral dirge.

~*~*~*~ 

Zoe takes the stairs as slowly as possible. She’s half afraid they’ll be aiming for round two at this point and, really, watching the guy she’s in love with bang her friend is something she never needed to see once, let alone twice. Finally reaching the door, Zoe knocks loud and sharp, loud enough to wake the dead.

“Come in,” Madison sing-songs. 

Zoe nudges the bottom of the door with her shoe. It swings back on its hinges revealing Kyle sitting on the floor, looking at his flashcards. Madison is laying on her bed, one hand petting through Kyle’s hair, the other flipping pages in her fashion magazine. Zoe isn’t sure if this domestic scene is better or worse than watching them have sex. 

“Hey,” Zoe says lamely. 

Madison beams at her in response. But Kyle, Kyle jerks his head up and stares at her like she’s the first light he’s seen after years of darkness. He scrambles across the floor, grabbing her by the wrists and pulling her down to the floor with him. 

She covers her feelings of inadequacy and jealousy by gently freeing herself from his grip. “Hey, Kyle,” she says. She keeps a firm twelve inches between them. 

For his part, Kyle isn’t interested in the distance. “Zoe,” he says eagerly. He pushes up her sleeve messily and traces the mark she made the night before. 

Zoe tucks her arm behind her. Everything from last night seems brash and reckless now. “Yeah, I’m here,” she assures him. 

Kyle looks at her, puzzled, his brow creased. He reaches for her arm again, trying to tug it back from where she’s hidden it. “Zoe.”

“Let’s go over your flash cards,” she sidesteps. There in semi-chaos behind him, scattered over the floor where he’d left them to come to her side. 

She leans forward to gather them up when Kyle shouts, “No!” 

“I think he’s learned that other activities can be a lot more fun than staring at grainy pictures.” Madison sits up on her bed, tossing her magazine aside. 

There’s a twist in her stomach and Zoe just – she just can’t do this right now. “I’ll see you guys later.” She leaves before either one can stop her, not that she’s sure they would even try.


	5. Heart's Desire

Things with Queenie don’t go well. Their Coven in general isn’t going well. Zoe sits with her head propped in her hand as Madison drives them back to the Academy. 

“You’re looking at it the wrong way,” Madison says, her voice oddly cheerful. “With Queenie off gallivanting with the Voodoo Queen, that is one less witch to claim she is the next Supreme.”

“Do you really care that much about being the next Supreme?” Zoe turns her eyes toward Madison. In profile, Madison looks every bit the movie star glamour girl that she is. Her hair pulled sleekly back from her face in a pony tail that looks elegant instead of messy. 

Zoe can’t help but wonder, that since before he died Kyle had showed no interest in Madison, what makes her so much more appealing now that he’s dead? She gets the camaraderie thing. She can’t compete with shared life experience when it comes to being brought back to life. It twists itself like knots that chaff her skin, that Madison and Kyle share some connection that Zoe can never have access to. 

“Uh, duh. Don’t you?” Madison flips her blinker on as they near the Academy. “Oh, wait, you only care about Lover Boy,” she teases. “Thank god I’m sharing him with you. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to live in this house with you pining after Kyle the way Nan pines after Luke.”

Zoe feels the sting of her words and shifts to stare out the window. “He’s not a toy, Madison.”

“Mm, how we disagree. I think he makes an absolutely yummy sex toy.” There’s lust in her voice that makes Zoe wish she had brought her headphones along. “Speaking of, I’m thinking a threesome is just what we need to start this morning off right.”

The tires roll to a stop in the driveway of the Academy and Zoe quickly hops out of the car. She makes her way toward the front door with brisk steps meant to leave Madison behind her. “I’m going to talk to Cordelia about Queenie, but you two have fun.” The words taste like bile in her mouth. 

Sharing was such a tremendously stupid idea. But the bigger fear is, that Kyle would choose Madison if it came to being with just one of them. Madison obviously fulfills the sexual desires that Zoe didn’t even know Kyle had been harboring. 

And sex, for Zoe, it’s been a touchy subject ever since find out about her “special gift.” She knows it probably sounds stupid for a girl who literally used sex to murder a guy, but she wants to go slow. She wants to fall in love, to learn the shape of a boy’s mouth and the feel of his arms around her before they eventually start shedding clothes. 

She wanted that boy to be Kyle, but now, with Madison, that is seeming anything but likely. 

Zoe finds Cordelia in the living room, her cane held between two hands as she sits on the sofa, her unseeing eyes focused in front of her. Zoe sits down beside her. Cordelia turns to her, a soft smile on her lips. “Good morning, Zoe.”

Zoe reaches out and brushes her fingers against the back of Cordelia’s hand so that her own worried feelings can pass from her to the new head of house, if not the next Supreme. “We’re failing, Cordelia.”

Cordelia sighs. “When our next Supreme –“

“I don’t think we have time to wait for that,” Zoe interrupts. “We lost Madison, Queenie left us, and Fiona has all but abandoned us.” 

“I know we are going through hard times, Zoe, but we must hold strong. We must believe in the Coven and things will sort themselves out, I promise you.” With that, it is clear that the conversation is closed. 

Zoe stands up, impatient and disappointed. She likes Cordelia, but she needs action. She doesn’t want to go back to her room, she doesn’t need to see the live show that is Kyle and Madison right now. So she walks back to the front door, thinking some time outside might help her figure out what to do next. 

It turns out, opening the door is all she needs to do. A panicked Misty, barefoot and dirty, is standing right there. “You’ve got to help me, Zoe!”

“Misty?” Zoe takes her by the hand and leads her into the house. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“They were looking for me. I don’t know how they found me, but they were skulking outside my house. Please, help me?” Her eyes jitter back and forth, scared. 

“Yeah, of course, come on.” She slips her fingers between Misty’s and leads her into the living room. “Cordelia?”

Cordelia stands, using her cane to her make her way to them. “Who is this, Zoe?”

“Misty, she’s a witch like us.” Zoe looks at Misty’s pale face and adds, “She’s my friend too.”

Misty flashes a nervous smile at her, her hand squeezing Zoe’s. “I – uh – I brought a friend too.”

Which is how they meet resurrected Myrtle. Zoe finds herself flooded with relief. Another witch brought back to the Coven. Zoe might never have been personally close to Myrtle, but watching her burn had been absolutely awful. Seeing her alive again, if still a little crispy around the edges, is immensely relieving. 

“Zoe,” Cordelia asks, her voice faint with disbelief, “get Madison for me, will you?”

Zoe nods. She backs out of the greenhouse and takes the stairs two at a time up to her room. She’s about to push the door open when she falls back a step. Instead, she knocks on the door, tentative. 

“Ugh, what?” Madison calls back. 

“It’s me,” Zoe answers. 

“Come in, loser. It’s your room too.” 

Zoe grimaces and pushes open the door. Inside, she finds a shirtless Kyle sitting on the edge of Madison’s bed. His hands hang between his legs. His pants are still unzipped and unbuttoned. Zoe forcefully looks away from him to Madison who is sitting propped up behind him, resting her weight against him. Her fingers trail idly over the scars on his neck. 

Zoe turns away, forgetting for a moment why she’s even there. Then the clatter of shoes downstairs reminds here. “Myrtle’s back.”

“From the store?” Madison deadpans.

“From the grave, or the ashes, if you like,” Zoe corrects. But the lack of recognition catches her attention and she reverses her stance. “How much don’t you remember, Madison?”

“What? Like it matters?” Madison brushes off the question. “I remember who I am and I remember who you are, in my opinion that’s more than enough.”

Zoe frowns at her. “Madison, serious shit is going on all around us. I can help you fill in the blanks.” She’s been carefully avoiding looking at Kyle, but when he stands up, he’s in the center of her view. 

His mouth is pulled down in a frown and he takes three jumbled steps toward her before wrapping his arms around her. Kyle buries his face in the crook of her neck and she wonders how he’s not choking on her hair. “Zoe.”

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth even though she doesn’t want it to. Even though she wants to stay focused on the fact that he and Madison just got done fooling around. Instead, she tucks her arms around his back and says, “Hey, Kyle.”

They stay together for several moments, Zoe enjoys their closeness, enjoys the warm feel of Kyle against her. Kyle nuzzles into the corner of her neck, huffing a sound that seems happy. 

“Uhm, okay, the lovey-dovey vibes in here are really turning me off. I’m going to go welcome the human barbeque stick back.” Madison hops off the bed and prances out of the room. Her eyes meet Zoe’s as she leaves and there’s a look in them that Zoe can’t quite decipher, but it is one that suggests she’s not the only one uncertain about this whole sharing thing. 

When Madison has left, Kyle pulls back. He takes Zoe’s hand in his and pulls her toward the floor with him. She goes willingly, but reaches out to grab his black sweater from the floor next to Madison’s bed. “Shirt?” she asks, offering it to Kyle. 

He grabs it from her, shoving his head and arms through it clumsily. Zoe taps on the band of his jeans. He looks down, his brow puckered. Zoe laughs a little, leaning forward and doing them up for him. Kyle rests his head against the top of hers as she’s bent toward him. “Zoe.”

She rubs her hand against his knee. “Kyle.”

Kyle sits up and digs in the back pocket of his pants for a second, pulling out his deck of flash cards. He spreads them out in front of him and points to one of a floppy eared Labrador. “Dog.” He looks up at Zoe for approval. 

Zoe beams at him, cupping his face in her hands and kissing his nose delightedly. “Oh my god, Kyle!”

He smiles back at her. “Dog,” he says again. 

“What else?” she asks him. 

He points to a picture of a bed. “Bed. Sleep.” 

Zoe kisses each of his eyelids this time.

“Food.” He points to a plate with a hamburger. “Sun. Tree.” 

She kisses each of his cheeks and then his chin. “Kyle,” she enthuses, “I’m so proud of you.”

Kyle slides forward a picture of a heart. “Zoe.” He looks up at her and taps the heart again. “Zoe.”

A blush rises in her cheeks. She ducks her head so he won’t see her goofy smile, but he tilts her chin up with his thumbs, his hands cupped softly behind her neck. His right thumbs drifts up, sliding over the curve of her smiling lips. “Zoe, happy?”

“So happy,” she whispers. She taps the index card with the heart. “Kyle.”

Kyle pulls her close and she crawls onto his lap, her legs circling his waist. She rests her head on his shoulder, breathing in the cold mint smell of him. His fingers play through her hair. “Zoe,” he sighs happily. 

Madison might have Kyle’s desire, but Zoe has his heart. Maybe she can live with sharing.


	6. Bed Sheets

Zoe wakes up to the softly repeated calling of her name. It’s dark in the bedroom as she gently untangles herself from Kyle’s arms. The floor chills her bare feet and Zoe crosses it on tiptoe. In the hall, Zoe follows the repetition of her name to the room at the far end, the room where Misty is staying. 

“Hey, Zoe,” Misty smiles. Zoe thinks that Misty’s smile is one of the most beautiful things about her, it’s so innocent, childlike. Misty is sitting curled up on her bed, her hands covering her wriggling toes. 

Zoe smiles and sits down on the bed next to her. “Can’t sleep?”

Misty’s smile falters. “This house . . .” She shakes her head, her carelessly curly hair swaying about her shoulders. “It doesn’t feel good, you know?”

Zoe heaves a sigh. “Yeah, I really do. Cordelia believes we can bring the goodness back to the Academy, but I don’t know. Queenie has jumped ship, Myrtle and Madison had to be brought back from the dead, Cordelia has been blinded, and our Supreme is the one going around murdering us.”

“So why do you stay?” Misty asks. She cocks her head so it is resting on her knee that is tucked close to her chest. 

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Zoe answers. “My parents, they sent me here when they found out what I am. So this,” she gestures to the walls around them, “even though it’s in shambles, it’s the closest thing I have to family.”

“You have me,” Misty says firmly. She reaches out with her hand and laces her fingers through Zoe’s. “How are things going with Romeo?”

Zoe’s nose wrinkles and Misty laughs. “Not that great then?”

Zoe shakes her head slightly. “I don’t know. I mean, I really like him.” Admitting she’s in love with a dead boy is a bit much, even to someone who has become her confidant. “But this thing with Madison. We’re - we’re sharing him. Kyle I mean.”

“How do you share a person, exactly?” Misty asks. “Because I remember when he was with me and I could hardly stand the thought of him wanting to leave with you after he’d been living with me. It wasn’t anything romantic, but it was the longest time I had been living with another breathing human being in years.”

Zoe bites her lip. There’s no way to make up for how Misty had been treated in the past, the only she can do is promise a better future. “You’re not going to be alone again, Misty. Whatever happens, you, me, and Kyle, we’re going to make it out of all of this, I promise.”

Misty smiles at her, like it’s a nice dream, but not a reality. “That doesn’t solve your love triangle though, does it?”

“It’s hard to be around them,” Zoe confesses, feeling terrible as she says. “Kyle, he likes Madison, I can tell. And obviously she likes him too. And they like each other in a very sexual way. And I - that’s just - “ She breaks off. 

“You can tell me.” Misty nudges her gently with her shoulder. 

It’s nice, Zoe realizes, to have someone she can pour all of her secrets out to without fearing being judged or rejected. She can’t remember a time she’s ever had that. “I kill people when I sleep with them,” she says flatly. “It’s like a Black Widow power or something stupid.”

Misty’s eyebrows disappear beneath her messy bangs. “Well, that’s one hell of a power.” 

Zoe rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know, I’m sure you’re totally jealous of it.” 

“Hey,” Misty scolds,” tugging Zoe in close beneath her arm. “I’ve been living completely alone in a swamp afraid of being murdered. If we want to compare sob stories of being a witch, I think I’m still going to win.”

A smile twitches at the corner of Zoe’s mouth. “Okay, fine. But it still sucks.”

“That’s a thought. Can you do that particular party trick without killing the lucky guy?” 

“Misty!” Zoe cries, surprised and fighting laughter. 

Misty smiles sweetly. “Won’t know until you try, I guess.” 

“You’re awful.” Zoe laughs. She falls back on the bed and Misty goes with her. As she looks up, she finds Misty has painted her ceiling to look like a starry night. “That’s nice,” she says, pointing to it. 

“Think so?” Misty squeezes her hand in thanks. 

“Yeah.” She turns her head to look at Misty. “Can I stay here tonight?”

“Please do.” Misty scrambles up the bed, pulling down the covers and motioning for Zoe to follow her. 

Zoe crawls up the bed, tucks herself beneath the sheets and closes her eyes. “Night, Misty.”

“Nigth, darlin’.” Misty links up their fingers again. And it’s really, really nice to have someone to fall asleep next to that makes her feel safe and cared for.

~*~*~*~

It’s her name being called again that wakes Zoe up. But this time, it isn’t that gentle call in her head, it’s the desperate call of a distraught Kyle. Zoe sits up bolt right, but is careful not to disturb Misty as she climbs out of bed.

She hurries into the hallway, the t-shirt she’s wearing brushing against her upper thighs. It’s chilly in the house and goose bumps break out across her bare skin. “Kyle?” she calls quietly. 

He lumbers into her a moment later, his arms wrapping tight around her. Zoe breathes him in, the same aroma of cold mint that seems to cling to him always. “Gone,” he accuses. 

“Sorry,” she apologizes. She pushes up onto her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. “Come on,” she says. She takes his hand in hers and pulls him after her into Misty’s room. 

Kyle stares backwards, stopping at the threshold. “Madison?”

Zoe sucks the corner of her lip beneath her teeth. She shrugs at Kyle. “I’m sleeping in here.” She points to the bed where Misty is still sleeping, her face hidden beneath the mess of her curls. “You can sleep with us or with Madison. It’s yours choice.”

Choice, it’s something she really wants him to understand, because so far, since coming back from the dead, he hasn’t had a lot of choices. He didn’t choose to come back. He didn’t choose to be reassembled from other people’s body parts. He didn’t choose his inability to function like a normal person. And he didn’t choose the scars that make a patchwork of his pale skin. 

Kyle hesitates, clearly torn between the two choices. Or the two girls, Zoe thinks. She hopes he’ll choose her. She always wants him to choose her, but she understands the appeal of Madison. She offers him things that Zoe can’t or won’t. 

Kyle takes a step backwards, their arms stretch out between them where their hands are still linked together. Zoe let’s go, her arm falling to her side. “It’s okay,” she encourages, even though she’s horribly disappointed. 

Kyle’s eyes don’t leave her face in the dark. He takes another step backward, like he’s testing the distance between them. Zoe decides to help him commit to his choice by turning her back and returning to the bed. She climbs over Misty and slides under the sheets. She pinches her eyes shut even as her heart thuds sickeningly in her chest. 

The bedroom door creaks shut and Zoe rolls over. She buries her face against the curve of Misty’s back and wills herself not to be upset. It’s good that Kyle made a choice, even if it wasn’t the one she hoped for. As she’s repeating this to herself, trying to will herself to sleep, the bed dips beneath a new weight. 

Zoe’s breathing freezes in her lungs. Misty mumbles in her sleep, inching closer to the edge of the bed to make room for its new occupant. Zoe moves with her. Kyle slots in neatly behind Zoe, his arms wrapping around her and pulling Zoe into the warm curves of his body. 

He presses his face into the back of her neck, the fingers of his right hand sliding against the strands of Zoe’s hair the way he loves to. “Zoe,” he says on a whispered sigh. 

Zoe feels her heart soaring, her eyes still held tightly shut, praying the moment won’t shatter and prove itself to be a dream and nothing more. “Good night, Kyle.” She covers his hand with her own, rubbing her thumb against his knuckles. 

From beside her, Misty reaches back and pulls Zoe’s arm around her chest. Cradled between friendship and love, Zoe has a spark of hope. Maybe their Coven can resurrect just like the two people she’s holding onto.


	7. Black Sun

“The Sacred Taking?” Zoe asks, sitting at the counter with a mug of coffee in her hands. 

Kyle is upstairs in Zoe’s room. Zoe found some chidren’s books secreted away in the library from a time when the Academy had been a haven for witches, even ones with children. She’d given them to Kyle, pointing to the one called Miggy’s Red Ball. It was about a Golden Retriever named Miggy and the red ball he finds to play with. 

Kyle had taken it eagerly. “Dog,” he told Zoe confidently, pointing to the picture. 

She had beamed at him, bending down to kiss his cheek. “Great job!”

Madison, fixing her hair in the full length mirror had huffed in disgust. “He’s not a two year old, Zoe.”

Zoe glared darkly at her. “No, he’s not,” she agreed. “He’s recovering and he’s working really hard.” 

Kyle’s hand circled around her ankle where she was still crouched next to him. He tapped his fingers on her skin as he stared hard at the first page. “Ball?” he asked, pointing to the round object then looking up at Zoe. 

“Yep,” she agreed. 

“As if he’s ever going to have a use for the word ball. Why aren’t you at least teaching him useful things, like sex, head, etc.” She fluffed her hair once more in the mirror. 

Zoe balled her hands into fists. “That isn’t his entire worth, you get that, right? That Kyle is a person, just like you and me. Actually, a lot like you, brought back from the dead and all. But somehow you haven’t ended up as street walker, so why should he?”

“Not a street walker,” Madison said sweetly, walking over to the both of them and lifting Kyle up by placing her hand under his chin and tugging. Kyle stood up, skirting looks from Zoe to Madison and back again. “A very handsome male companion though.” 

Madison leaned in, her mouth over taking Kyle’s. His eyes closed and he leaned into her, his hands landing on her waist as they kissed. Zoe left the room without a backward glance.

Misty was leaving her room at the same time, both hands tangled together nervously. Seeing Zoe’s expression, Misty glanced toward the closed bedroom door. “Come on,” she said, reaching out to take Zoe’s hand. 

Zoe took it gratefully, putting the scene between Kyle and Madison out of her thoughts. They were like a dysfunctional polyamory. Zoe providing Kyle’s emotion investment, Madison his sexual one. How were they going to carry on like this? 

Now at breakfast, having a quasi-boyfriend who got his jollies off with a different girl seemed like a drop in the water compared to the waves that were being suggested with the Sacred Taking. 

“I don’t know that I’m wholly comfortable with encouraging Fiona to take her own life,” Zoe tells the others. 

Misty nods her head vigorously. “My gift is resurrection. Helping any creature die, that’s not - “ she broke off, lips pressed together. 

Cordelia reaches out, placing a comforting hand over Misty’s. “This is in the best interest of the Coven. Fiona has played out her role as Supreme, and she has played it out poorly. With everything that is happening, we need a new Supreme.”

“Then you’re lucky you all have me,” Madison says as she waltzes into the kitchen. She winks at Zoe and Zoe has no doubt that Kyle has just received an education of a different kind behind closed doors and across tousled sheets. 

Misty looks Madison up and down before shooting a questioning glance at Zoe. For her part, Zoe isn’t surprised by Madison’s declaration. It appears she isn’t alone. Cordelia turns in Madison’s direction. 

“We are lucky, actually,” she agrees. 

Nan’s gasp of disbelief doesn’t go unnoticed and Zoe has to quickly hide her laughter in her coffee mug. Misty catches her out though and grins at her. 

“Girls,” Myrtle chides in her reedy voice. “Cordelia is correct. For what we have in mind is using Fiona’s own fears against her. Since she decided so fully on Madison being the next Supreme that she struck her down, we shall use that to convince her it is true.”

“It’s not,” Nan points out.

“As if you know that,” Madison says spitefully. 

“Girls,” Myrtle intercedes again. “We need to be in harmony for this ritual to work. We will convince Fiona that Madison has performed the resurrection spell herself and that she is truly the next Supreme that Fiona had so feared and that the best thing Fiona can do is take a graceful exit.”

“Graceful exit?” Zoe asks, eyebrows raised. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard suicide referred to that way before.”

Myrtle purses her lips at Zoe. “Harmony,” she repeats. 

Zoe sighs, but nods to show she won’t be a problem. 

“So when are we doing this thing?” Madison asks,staring down at her nail polish. “Because as the next Supreme, I could really use a wardrobe update.” 

“Tonight,” Cordelia announces. “When Fiona gets home this evening, we will gather in the parlor and perform the Sacred Taking. It’s a complicated ritual and will take us some time,” she advises. 

Zoe’s thoughts shift to Kyle. He’s already going stir crazy having to be kept in the house and specifically in one of the bedrooms all the time. Leaving him there for another night without anyone to talk to would just be cruel. Which means it’s time to figure out something for Kyle to do while the rest of them try to convince a powerful witch that death is the answer she has been searching for.

~*~*~*~ 

They’ve got the afternoon to fill before this evening’s ritual so Zoe and Madison leave the house with Kyle in between them. Madison is holding his hand, pulling Kyle close every now and then to nibble on his bottom lip. Zoe finds herself letting them lead the way, willingly falling behind a few steps.

“Zoe,” Madison sings, looking over her shoulder. “Sharing is caring.” 

Zoe’s black sun hat keeps her nicely concealed in the cool shadows. The New Orleans air is hot and extra humid today. Holding hands, in general, would be bound to become a sweaty affair. And yet, somehow that still seems more appealing than holding hands in a line of three, with Kyle, like their child, positioned in between them. 

Zoe shrugs, her hands slipping down into the pockets of her black dress. “What do you really think of the Sacred Taking” she asks, hoping to redirect Madison’s focus. 

“I think that whatever convinces the old hag to off herself is a step in the right direction. Besides, it’s not like Cordelia is wrong. I can perform the resurrection spell. Baby boy here is proof of that.” Madison presses up onto the balls of her feet, pulling Kyle in for a messy, loud make out. 

Zoe wonders how childish it would be to plug her ears with her fingers. She opts instead to trail back a few feet and pluck a wild flower from the edging of the sidewalk. 

“Zoe?” Kyle asks. He’s staring back at her with those wide conflicted eyes he gets sometimes. Where it’s obvious he doesn’t know what sharing means anymore than she or Madison do. 

She offers him the flower. Kyle takes it with a lopsided smile. “Flower,” he tells her. 

She smiles at him. Kyle twiddles it between his fingers and Zoe reaches for it again when she sees Madison doing the same. Madison is not going to throw her precious flower to the ground to be trampled into dirt. Zoe tucks the flower carefully behind Kyle’s ear, in the nest of his blonde curls. 

Kyle’s responds by smiling wide and happy. He opens his right hand, the one with the funny red tattoo, offering to hold hands with her. Zoe declines by positioning herself behind them once more. 

Madison scoffs in disgust. “I don’t know why you are so Puritan with him. It’s not like he’s new to full frontal. And besides,” Madison curls a hand behind Kyle’s neck and angles his face towards her, “it’s what he does best.” She flicks her tongue between her lips suggestively. 

“Madison!” Zoe can’t believe her. Can’t believe they are even talking about any of this on the freaking sidewalk a block from the Academy. “Kyle isn’t some sort of living sex toy. He’s a person. You do remember that, right?”

“Zoe, get real. From what we’ve seen so far, the only thing he actually remembers how to do is stick his dick in a hole and get to work.”

“You’re disgusting,” Zoe says with vehemence. “What happened to you? What happened when you came back that I don’t even recognize you anymore?” 

Madison whirls around, her hand still clamped tightly to Kyle’s, holding him to her like an anchor. “Oh, and what is it exactly that you ever knew about me, Zoe?”

“We were friends, Madison! Now I can’t imagine why I would ever have talked to you.” Zoe throws her hands up, frustrated and disappointed. This was not how things were supposed to work out. Bringing Madison back was supposed to be the right thing to do. She was supposed to be helping fix a wrong. 

But now it seems, just like every other time she tried to fix something, Zoe got it all wrong. It’s like a living in Salem’s Lot, where the person brought back from the dead is suddenly replaced by something horrid and malicious, not at all the person they were before. But Madison isn’t a vampire and this isn’t a Stephen King novel, this is Zoe’s life. 

Madison’s full lips curl into a sneer. “The only reason I ever talked to you was because you were so far beneath me. When we went to that party, you were a guarantee that all of the guys would look at me. So maybe, what’s actually happened, dear Zoe, is that you are finally seeing who I really am.” 

Zoe has no words. What Madison has said doesn’t even hurt. The sentiment hits against some invisible barrier, one that Zoe has unknowingly been building since Madison’s return from the dead. She shakes her head. “You get to choose who you are, Madison. I just don’t know why you would choose to be someone so ugly.”

The sun is burning overhead, it makes Zoe’s black sun hat and black dress feel like drops of fire against her skin. She turns around, ready to return to the oppressive white coolness of the Academy. 

“Zoe!” 

Madison’s voice chases after her but Zoe doesn’t stop. She keeps walking, keeps thinking about the time they brought Kyle back. How it wasn’t Madison’s breath that completed the spell, but Zoe’s when she kissed Kyle’s cold, dead lips. She thinks about the way Madison has always talked about boys. As slaves, ones for her pleasure. That’s what Kyle is to her now. 

She’s not running, but her heart is pumping Iike she’s sprinting. She’s not crying, but her vision is blurred by the brightness of the sun. She’s not screaming, but the whirring in her ears blocks out all other sounds. 

Does anything good ever come from the Academy? Has anything good come of her moving here? She’s killed a rapist. Killed. Murdered. She’s reassembled a dead body like she was fucking Dr. Frankenstein. She’s losing sight of herself in the full darkness that takes over everything and everyone that enters the double doors of the Academy. 

“Zoe!” Madison’s hand catches on her elbow and yanks Zoe to a stop. “I’m sorry,” Madison says, her voice full of humility. 

She’s shaking, Zoe realizes from some distant part of herself. The part of her that is watching all of this from a great distance and wondering how the hell she got here. Her hands are balled into fists and she’s trembling with rage. 

“I didn’t mean it,” Madison apologizes. “Everything’s just been - it’s just been so wrong since I came back. I can’t feel anything, Zoe. It’s like I’m in a block of ice and the only time that I can even feel a hint of warmth, is when I’m with Kyle. So yeah, maybe I’m going overboard with the whole sex thing, but it’s literally all I’ve got, Zoe.”

She’s pleading with Zoe to understand and Zoe’s watching it all from this weird distance. Feeling like she’s staring down on some pathetic high school play. The popular girl Madison begging her loser friend Zoe to understand that life is so hard for the rich and beautiful. All the while, the boy they both like, Kyle is standing on the side, not in focus but somehow the center of this whole performance. 

“You can be with him too, Zoe,” Madison says. “You can’t be upset with me for wanting to take him to bed. And you can’t be upset with me if you choose not to. We could have it be the three of us again, just like the first time.”

Madison’s hand is crawling down her elbow, slithering towards her hand. Zoe jerks away and falls swiftly back to earth, away from that place outside of herself. “I know that things have been awful for you,” she says, her voice low, “but that doesn’t make it okay for you to be awful to everyone else.” 

Zoe shakes off Madison and heads back to the house. Her left hand is stretched out to the side, because somehow she just knows. She knows that Kyle is going to come after her. 

And when he does, his fingers slot perfectly between hers. “Zoe,” he says quietly. 

“Sorry about the fight,” she tells him. She doesn’t look back to see where Madison is. She honestly doesn’t care right now. 

Kyle squeezes her hand. “Zoe, okay?”

“No,” she admits, “I’m not.” 

Tonight the darkness of the Academy will continue to consume her. The Sacred Taking will move forward and if it is successful, another dead body will be stretched out beneath Zoe’s feet.


	8. Gifts Given

When they get to the gates of the Academy, Zoe just can’t make herself go inside. Instead, she tugs at Kyle’s hand and leads them across the street. Around them, the weather is warm but not as muggy, warning that fall, or what passes for it in New Orleans, is making its presence known. 

Kyle walks silently at her side, his thumb rubbing at the back of her hand in gentle sweeps that she’s not even sure he’s aware of. She rests her head against the side of his shoulder, enjoying their solitude. At the Academy, it seems like she’s never alone, there is always another witch somewhere in the corner of her eye. 

“I’ve got an idea,” she tells Kyle. Her mouth brushes against the soft fabric of his black sweater as she speaks. “I want to buy something for Misty.”

“Out?” Kyle asks. 

“Yeah” she answers. “But not in the city. There’s a resale shop a few blocks from here. Nobody will recognize you. Is that okay?”

Zoe stops walking to let Kyle think about it. As he does, he looks worriedly down at her. “People?”

“Mhm,” she nods. “But I’ll be with you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Kyle shakes his head briskly, frustrated. “Not people,” he says. “Not people.”

He’s getting agitated, his hand abandoning hers to fist at the side of his temple. Zoe reaches out and brings it back into her grasp. “Hey, what’s wrong?” She soothes her thumbs over his palm. 

Kyle groans, shaking his head again. “Not people!” He smacks the side of his head with his free hand. Zoe quickly secures that one between her hands as well. 

“Alright,” she agrees, “not people.” She tries to parse out what Kyle is trying to tell her. She knows that right now, Kyle doesn’t exactly count himself as a person, but she doesn’t think that’s what he means this time. 

Zoe looks behind her, down the empty streets lined with tall white washed houses. The neighborhood is like a skeleton, all of these white bones forming the husk of what used to be a vibrant area. She wonders which came first, the witches or the exodus. 

“Not people,” Kyle repeats, distressed. “Kyle. Kyle bad.”

Zoe’s eyes widen in sudden understanding. “Oh!” She drops Kyle’s hands to cup his face instead. She smiles up at him, bumping her nose lightly into his. “I promise I won’t let anything happen, Kyle. Not to you and not to them, okay? It’ll be quick and if you think something’s going to happen, we’ll leave, right away.” 

Kyle frowns, shaking his head slightly, but his dark eyes look hopeful, like maybe this one time he can do something normal, something he used to do. She kisses the tip of his nose reassuringly. “More happy love,” she says quietly, smiling at him. It’s a phrase they’ve found to mean things are going to be alright, a promise that everything will be okay. 

Kyle sighs, leaning his head down to rest against hers. “Zoe.”

She wraps her arms around him, hugging him close. “Come on,” she cajoles, “you owe Misty a few things.”

The trip goes without a hitch, probably aided along by the fact that they see no one on the way to or from the resale shop and also by the fact that they were the only ones there. But either way, Kyle is clearly feeling proud for not having injured anyone and Zoe’s pretty pleased about it too. 

So as they bound up the stairs to Misty’s room, they are smiling and chasing each other. Zoe crashes through the door with her store bag in hand and Kyle follows close after. 

Misty sits up on her bed, grinning at their obvious joy. “No what on earth are you two doing here?”

“We got you something,” Zoe says, holding out the bag to Misty. When Misty takes it, Zoe sits down on the floor in front of the bed and Kyle sits beside her. 

Misty holds the bag, looking with disbelief from Kyle to Zoe. “You - you got me something?”

Zoe tilts her head with a smile. “Yeah, it’s a kind of gift.”

“Nobody - ” Misty shakes her head, sucks in her bottom lip. “Nobody’s ever gotten me a gift.”

Zoe’s heart pings, but she doesn’t want this moment to be melancholy, so instead, she smiles brightly at Misty. “Well, now you have. So open it!”

Misty smudges her palm across her cheek quickly. Then she rallies, and opens the bag. Reverently, she takes out the second hand CD player. She sets it on her nightstand and looks at with sparkling eyes. 

“There’s more,” Zoe prompts. 

Misty blinks her attention back to the bag and takes out two CDs. “I don’t know if they’re good ones,” Zoe tells her. “But I figured we couldn’t go too wrong with the Greatest Hits of Stevie Nicks and the Greatest Hits of Fleetwood Mac.” 

Misty holds both CDs in her hands. She rubs her thumb across the scratched plastic case. “You got me Stevie?”

“To make up for the one Kyle broke,” Zoe explains. 

Kyle ducks his head. Zoe isn’t sure if he remembers the incident or not, but hearing about it is apparently an uncomfortable experience for him. Things aren’t going exactly as she had planned. Zoe didn’t want to make Kyle feel bad and she had no idea receiving a gift would be such an emotional experience for Misty. 

It’s clearly time to get things back on track before anything else goes sideways. She sits up on her knees, reaching around the back of the nightstand and plugging in the CD player. Then she gently removes the Fleetwood Mac album from Misty’s hand and inserts it into the CD player. 

When she pushes play, Rhiannon, pours out of the speakers. Misty’s eyes light up immediately and Zoe knows that while she might not be able to make everything better for her friends, at least this once, she got things right.

~*~*~*~

Two hours later, Misty is on her third listen through the Fleetwood Mac album and Zoe is starting to think she’ll have the lyrics to all of the songs memorized by the end of the week. She’s stretched out on the hardwood of Misty’s floor, flipping through the pages of the children’s books she brought down for Kyle.

Kyle is staring intensely at the pages of one with an alarmingly pink cover. It reminds Zoe of a Pepto Bismol commercial. She gives up her own book and cross to Kyle. He’s laid out on his stomach, arms propping him up as his mouth moves silently, trying to form the words. 

Zoe crawls on top of him, resting her weight against his back. Kyle doesn’t react to the sudden increase of pressure on his arms. For a while now, Zoe has suspected that Kyle came back with more than an ordinary, human, amount of strength. His totally non-reaction to her atop him reaffirms these thoughts. 

“What are you reading?” she asks, crossing her arms against the back of his neck and resting her chin on the crown of his head. 

Kyle grunts. He jabs a finger at the picture in front of him. Zoe blinks. “The Little Mermaid?”

“What?” Misty asks, pausing mid twirl. She crouches down to look over the book. “Huh. I saw that in theaters when it came out.” She drops down beside them. “Read it?” 

Zoe shoots her a questioning look, but Misty is in earnest, so Zoe clears her throat. “Okay, first page, Kyle?”

Kyle flips back to the start and Zoe reads. She reads about Ariel wanting to be a human, about falling in love with Eric, and trading her voice for legs. She reads about Eric not recognizing Ariel without her voice. How Eric falls for Ursula instead because she has Ariel’s voice. How Ursula is defeated by Eric and Ariel. And finally, how Eric and Ariel get to live happily ever after. 

Except, at the end, Kyle doesn’t look happy. “What, don’t you like mermaids?” Misty teases, standing back up and stretching. 

Kyle flips back through the pages, scrutinizing the pictures that show Ursula in disguise. Zoe isn’t sure what he’s thinking, but she decides, The Little Mermaid isn’t worth getting upset about so she gently tugs it out of his hands. “Let’s read something else now.” 

It’s purely by chance that she hands him the book. It was on top of the heap they have spread across Misty’s floor. She doesn’t think anything of the cover or the title. Johnny’s Day With Mommy. 

“Here,” she says and it all happens in an instant. 

Kyle opens to a random page. Little toddler Johnny is taking a bath, his mommy holding a rubber duck in the water for him. Kyle screams so loudly Zoe’s ears hurt. He trashes, throwing her to the side and sending her skidding into the wall. Misty lunges forward, throwing herself in front of her CD player. 

“No, Kyle!” Misty shouts.

Dazed, Zoe is trying to scramble to her feet, to get to Kyle. He grabs the book, rips it clean in half and hurls it across the room. Then he whirls around, his eyes wild, and makes toward the window. 

Zoe locks her gaze on him and sends him back across the room, his feet scraping against the floor the whole way. He’s a lot bigger than anything else she’s tried to move and she thanks her lucky stars it works at all. Pushing up to her feet, she runs to Kyle, trapping him in her arms and pushing, shoving, until they are out of Misty’s room. 

“Hey, hey,” she says, loudly to be heard over his yells and shouts of distress. “Kyle, I’m here. Kyle, look at me.”

He fights against her, his nails scratching into her skin and leaving red lines. She grabs his face between her hands and yanks him down to her. “I’m right here,” she says slowly, waiting for his wild gaze to catch on hers. 

When it does, his shoulders are heaving, his whole body trembling with movement. “No! No, no, no,” he moans. His knees sag and together they thud to the ground. 

Zoe gathers him close to her, resting his head against her chest. “I’ve got you,” she says. 

He holds her desperately, his tears soaking into her shirt, repeating again and again, “No, no, no.” 

Zoe feels her stomach twist. It was the same at Misty’s, the bath. She thinks of the mother in the picture. The little boy in the bath. Kyle’s mother bludgeoned to death. Zoe worries. She worries a lot. More than ever, Zoe wants to know what Kyle would tell her if he could find the words.


	9. Sacred Taking

Knowing that the Sacred Taking is bound to go on for most of the evening, Zoe pulls out her computer. They’ve avoided the children’s books since Kyle’s outburst but that doesn’t mean he has to stop learning. 

Zoe clicks through a couple of different websites, looking for one that teaches language in a way that will be manageable for Kyle. He peers over her shoulder as she goes over each site. “Do you like this one?”

The page is blue with frogs on it. It tells a story with Kyle being able to click to rehear phrases. It’s not exactly the most exciting thing Zoe has ever seen but she figures Kyle won’t mind too much. Kyle mumbles noncommittally.

“Yeah, I know,” she agrees. “But,” she takes his hand in hers, enjoying the warmth of his skin, “while I’m gone most of the night, you can study this stuff and we can start having in depth conversations about important stuff. Like what kind of music you like and why you ever joined a fraternity.” 

Kyle makes a face at her, but there’s a smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. When Kyle leans over to kiss her, Zoe hears the door opening and leans away instinctively. She doesn’t miss the look of disappointment on his face and she doesn’t miss the annoyance of Madison’s as she enters the room. 

“What are you two doing in here?” Madison sits down next to Kyle, draping herself against his side and mouthing at his neck. Zoe can’t help but look pointedly away. 

“We’re going to be busy all night so I found something for Kyle to do.” Zoe points to the computer screen. 

Madison huffs. “Why can’t he just watch porn and jerk off like other guys” 

Zoe’s anger bubbles inside her. “And why can’t he learn something and rejoin society? He’s a person, Madison, not a toy.”

Madison rolls her eyes dramatically. She twists to face Kyle and brings him in for a hot and heavy kiss. Zoe’s stomach rolls and she wants to vault from the bed, but she’s betting that’s the reaction Madison is hoping to evoke, so she sits still. 

“Don’t worry, baby, we’ll have fun tonight,” Madison promises, wiping her lipstick mark from Kyle’s lips with her thumb. She jumps up and leaves the room, her hips sashaying. 

Zoe is never more fully aware of her total lack of sex appeal than when Madison is in the room. Everything about Madison is meant to be sensual and evocative. Zoe may as well be a broomstick in the corner when Madison is around. 

The feel of Kyle’s hand coming back to cover hers brings her attention to the present. “Hey,” she says. 

Kyle looks at her, his expression mournful. She’s not sure why. If it’s just the tension between her and Madison that is upsetting him or if he is getting as muddled by their sharing situation as she is. Either way, she bumps her forehead into his to let him know everything is alright. 

Zoe hands him the computer and shows him how to use the mouse pad. “Learn a lot, okay?”

Kyle dolefully pokes at the keyboard and the website comes to life, starting to read the story. Glumly, Kyle watches the frogs on the screen. Zoe hates that he’s trapped here, but it’s not as if she would want him downstairs as part of the Sacred Taking either. It’s going to be dangerous, even if Myrtle assures them it will work. Convincing another person to take their life can’t possibly come without dangers. 

As she leaves the room, she looks back at Kyle, still prodding at the mouse pad half-heartedly. She looks at him, his messy blonde curls, the slope of his shoulders in his black sweater, and she feels her heart ache. Kyle is this bright shining spot in her world and he has no idea. 

Headphones, she thinks, hearing the voice of the website croak out another sentence. She grabs a pair from her nightstand and places them on Kyle’s ears. His expression of immediate wonder makes him shine even brighter in her heart.

~*~*~*~*~ 

The Sacred Taking does not fucking go as planned. Zoe is entirely unsurprised. She is, however, completely horrified that Luke has been shot and Joan is dead. Of course, things only get worse when it is announced that the bullets were really meant for them.

The only thing Zoe can think of is Kyle. She needs to get to Kyle. She brought him into this Hell House and now she needs to get him out. He is not going to be the next Luke, on his way to the Hospital with a bullet in his head. 

She takes the stairs two at time, slamming into the bedroom. Kyle pulls away from the computer, wrapping her in a warm hug that she clings to. She needs him. Desperately. She wasn’t willing to let him go when he died in the bus and she sure as hell isn’t ready to let him go now, not after everything it took to keep him here with her. 

When he leans into kiss her, Zoe is as much surprised as she is unwilling. He takes her rejection to heart, backing off several steps. And she knows she’s messed up with him again. 

“No, Kyle, it’s not you,” she rushes to reassure him. “We’re under attack. And I can’t let you stay here. I’ve got to get you somewhere safe.”

“No!” Kyle grabs her by the forearms, his eyes wide and frantic. 

She frowns at him, wanting to convince him this is best thing for him, but not wanting to let him out of her sight. “Kyle -“ she starts, but his softy labored words stop her. 

“This, road, goes, two, ways.” He says each word with concentration and effort. Zoe feels awful that she doesn’t understand a word of it. 

“What does that mean, Kyle?” she asks, fingers curling his hair behind his ears, holding him close while she still can, before she figures out where to take him to keep him safe. 

Kyle takes a deep breath. “I - “ he breathes in again, forcing his lips to form each letter sound and his lungs to exhale them, “love -“ 

Zoe’s heart speeds up, pinging in her chest like a bird desperate to escape, because it isn’t possible that Kyle spent the last few hours learning to say these words to her. It isn’t possible. There are so many other things that would be more important for him to learn. 

“You,” he finishes on a shuddering breath. 

Zoe stares at him, waits for time to reverse itself. It doesn’t. “I love you too,” she confesses, keeping her gaze steady on him so he will know it’s true. 

He wraps his arm around her, tucking her in close to the curves of his body. She melts against him, feeling complete for the first time since leaving home. 

If Zoe’s life were a movie, this is the moment where she and Kyle would make their love for each other known physically. Zoe’s life is not a movie though, so that’s doesn’t happen. Even when rolling between the sheets with Madison and Kyle, Zoe’s legs have remained strictly closed when it comes to Kyle. 

Until she is able to explain to him and be sure that he understands the implicit curse that comes with being with her in that way, she doesn’t want to have sex with him. And of course there is also the part of her that doesn’t want to have frantic, passionate kisses with him until she’s the only one he’s kissing. 

So instead of a night spent celebrating their new found love, they nestle together on the bed, Kyle spooned up behind her, an earbud in her left ear and in his right ear, and watch The Little Mermaid on her computer. It was Kyle’s choice. She’s not sure why he’s so fixated on the whole Ariel concept right now, but if this is how he wants to spend the evening than this is how she wants to spend it with him. 

Zoe chooses not to question where Madison is. She doesn’t miss her and she doesn’t want to have to share this with her either. If Kyle wonders where Madison is, he doesn’t say anything about it and Zoe isn’t about to ask. 

Kyle watches the movie with more attention than it warrants, but since this is the first movie he’s watched since he came back from the dead, Zoe figures that’s probably okay. She falls asleep with her head pillowed on Kyle’s arm, still warm from hearing him say those three magic words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. To be entirely honest, I’m not completely thrilled with my writing for this story. I love these characters and I hope I am doing an alright job of bringing them to life, but my sincere apologies if I’m not. I’m not usually a downer about my writing, but I just feel like I can’t find my groove in this story. I have the next few chapters typed up and will definitely see this story through to the end, but really, please accept my sincerest apologies if this story doesn’t have the sparkle I really wanted it to have. 
> 
> xo


	10. Magic Books

In the morning, Madison still isn’t in their room and Kyle is watching The Little Mermaid again. Zoe rolls over, burying her face in his chest. He rubs her back, a little stilted, but comforting nonetheless. “You know,” she says, words muffled by the fabric of his shirt, “there are other Disney movies we can watch.”

She feels Kyle shake his head above her. She figures she can wait to ask him why he is so transfixed by Ariel. In the meantime, she needs a shower before she starts her mission for the day. 

The water is warm as it hits her skin, not burning hot, and not cool, just warm. Zoe has never been able to stand water that is so hot it steams up the whole bathroom. Since discovering she is a witch, Zoe has chosen to believe this is a latent instinct against anything resembling fire. 

This morning, as she washes suds of soap up her arms, she focuses on the Coven, on the Academy, and how all of it is so empty. They are supposed to be learning how to be witches, instead, they hardly ever see Fiona and the only thing they have learned is that it is alarmingly easy to die in this Coven. 

But last night, with the Sacred Taking, Zoe saw proof that there is more here than has been talked about. There must be books on magic in this house, or how else would Myrtle know about the Sacred Taking or how to do it? And Cordelia has such an extensive knowledge of plants and their uses in magic, she must have learned it somewhere. 

The house might be a shell of what the Academy once was, but those secrets those books, must be hidden somewhere inside. Where else would they go? There’s a whole history of the Academy somewhere, or else there would be no need for the portraits of the past Supremes. Were they all like Fiona? Power hungry and vicious? Or were there good Supremes? There had to be, or else there wouldn’t be an Academy at all, right? 

Zoe scrubs her shampoo through her hair, frustrated that she has no one to share her thoughts with. Madison isn’t interested in anything that isn’t sex or being the Supreme. Nan’s entire world revolves around Luke, especially at the moment with him in the hospital. Queenie has seemingly quit the Coven. And Misty, well, Misty looked at Cordelia last night the same way that Zoe looks at Kyle. 

So, Zoe figures that even though Misty would help her if she asked, it’s probably better if Misty gets to spend the day hanging around with Cordelia. It would be nice, Zoe thinks, for both of them to have something good in their lives. That also leaves Zoe solving this mystery alone - well, not entirely alone. 

Zoe wraps a towel around her body and crosses to the bathroom door. She opens it and finds Kyle watching The Little Mermaid again. She holds back rolling her eyes, but does smile at his simple pleasure. 

“Hey, Romeo,” she teases, giddy with being able to be honest with him about her feelings. 

Kyle jerks around to see her and his eyes go wide as he takes in her lack of real clothing. He abandons the laptop to take Zoe by the hips and lead her over to him. She laughs as he pulls her, tucking the top of her towel more securely in against itself so it will hold as a makeshift dress. 

Kyle guides her onto his lap and she settles there comfortably. Kyle catches her eyes, bumping his nose into hers before angling his mouth for a kiss. Zoe kisses him back, loving the soft press of his lips against hers. She nips playfully at his bottom lip, grinning happily when he nips back. 

They topple backwards on the bed with Zoe’s head coming to rest against his chest. She listens to the steady, impossible beat of his heart against ribs that weren’t originally his. “I love you,” she says, drawing a heart with her fingertip against the fabric of his sweater. 

Kyle’s fingers card messily through her hair. “I - love - you,” he says slowly. He’s continuing to work on making the words smooth, but for now, they still come in that stilted, perfect way. 

“I need your help with something,” she tells him. 

Kyle rubs his thumb against the smooth skin behind her ear. He hums to let her know he is listening. 

“This house, it’s too empty. None of the rooms have anything inside them that lend themselves to magic. But it has to be here somewhere. So, we’re going to find it.”

Kyle grumbles a little. 

“Just you and me,” she says to his unasked question. “Well,” she corrects, “if you don’t want to help me, you don’t have to. And if you’d rather spend the day with Madison, that’s fine too.” It’s not, but it wouldn’t be fair to Kyle if she said how she really felt. 

Knowing that Kyle loves her hasn’t helped Zoe know how he feels about Madison. And while the dark part of her hopes that his love is for her, Zoe, alone, she can’t be certain of that. She’s just not going to ask about it either. The longer she can go on living in a world where Kyle loves her the way she loves him, the longer she can be happy with at least one aspect of her life. 

“Zoe,” Kyle intones with a surprising amount of feeling. 

Zoe props herself up on his chest to be sure she is interpreting him correctly. “You want to go with me?”

He eyes her deadpan as if to say, where else would he want to be. 

She leans down, kissing him firmly. “Thank you,” she says sincerely. 

Kyle actually rolls his eyes. Zoe feels elated. Every day, a small piece of Kyle comes back to him. 

“Come on.” She stands up, pulling Kyle by the hand to follow suit. “I’m going to put real clothes on,” Kyle frowns at this, “and you are going to change. As cute as you look in those jeans, and you do look cute, because your butt is A++ “

Kyle’s eyes shoot wide and he tackles her towards the floor. Zoe breaks out in bright laughter as Kyle smothers her face in kisses. She digs her hands into the back pockets of his jeans and squeezes his butt. She wasn’t kidding, he does have a great ass. 

It takes them a while to move from kissing around on the floor to actually changing and being ready to explore the house. But once they are ready, Kyle places his hand in Zoe’s and squeezes. 

“Thanks,” she says again, meaning it. She’s been alone for so long, even before finding out she was a witch, it’s a small miracle now to find herself with someone who wants to be at her side.

~*~*~*~ 

With the other witches occupied by their own pursuits, and Fiona not home as usual, the house is open to exploration. They start from the ground up, moving slowly through the rooms, looking for anything that might hide a door or closet. But there’s nothing.

On the second floor, they go through bedroom after bedroom and Zoe is sad to realize none of the witches here have personalized their rooms at all. They are all the same white washed walls and small bedroom sets with nothing to say which witch stays there. 

Zoe finds it eerie, as if they are all just waiting to be erased from the house. None of them have set up roots here even though this is where they have chosen to belong. 

At the end of the hallway on the second floor there is a door that Zoe knows belongs to none of the witches. She tries the handle but it doesn’t turn. Kyle gives it his own try and while the door creaks warningly, it still doesn’t open. 

Zoe looks up at Kyle. “I think we might have found what we were looking for.” 

Kyle looks from her to the door. “Locked.”

Zoe nods, lips pressed together as she thinks this over. “Maybe there’s a key somewhere?”

Kyle tries the door again, rattling it harder this time but not making any progress. 

Zoe thinks about the lock. She imagines the bolt twisting back, clicking into place inside the door itself. She reaches out and turns the knob. The door groans open. 

“Yes!” she cheers, turning to Kyle to share this victory with him.

He smiles at her, pushing the door fully open to let her step through. When she does, Zoe trips over the first step of a flight of stairs. Her excitement quickly fades. If the stairs lead to the attic, then she’s found nothing knew at all. 

Kyle makes a sound of inquiry behind her. “Is there a light switch?” she asks, not answering his question. 

They both fumble at the wall for a moment, Kyle finding the switch first, and suddenly a burst of yellowed light fills the passage. The stairs lead upwards to a second door. Zoe climbs them steadily, holding onto the banister as she goes. 

At that top, she turns the knob, this one is unlocked. She braces herself for disappointment and opens the door. 

“Oh my god,” she whispers. Zoe quickly steps into the room and pivots in the center. “It’s a second attic,” she tells Kyle.

Kyle peers around them, squinty in the dusty light. He reaches up, pulling the string of a hanging bulb and helping to illuminate the ornate space. “Books?”

The attic is cluttered with a number of different items. Broken chairs, old curtains, rusting bed frames, piled up newspapers. But it’s the walls she sees. Low bookshelves line every wall and the books shelves are crammed full. Leather bound spines, yellowed pages, jars of herbs and spices. 

Zoe kneels before the shelves, grabbing several books at randomly and laying them out in front of her. The first two are untitled and when she opens them, she finds that they aren’t books but scrapbook albums. They document some past class of the Academy, a Coven totally separate from her own. 

The next book she opens has a title in French. She flips through pages that feel delicate and thin. They list ingredients and Zoe puts that book to the side. Her French is good enough that she should be able to parse some meaning from the book. 

Kyle is crouched next to her, curious as he looks through one of the photo albums. Impulsively, she leans up and kisses his cheek. He looks back at her with a smile. “Books.”

“Books,” she agrees. 

They spend the rest of the early morning combing through the bookshelves. Zoe takes anything that interests her, intending to store the books beneath her bed. Kyle keeps occupied with the various photo albums they find. He points to a picture every now and then, showing Zoe the more impressive acts of magic on display in the black and white photographs. 

With their arms ladened down with books, they descend the stairs to the second floor. As they shut the door behind them, Zoe pictures once more, the lock sliding out from the door and clicking into place in the door frame. Kyle gives the knob a quick test but it holds still. 

One mystery of the Academy is solved which only leaves Zoe with about a hundred more to go. And when she gets back to her room, she is confronted with her next. 

“Nan is missing,” Madison announces from her bed. She doesn’t bother to look up from her fashion magazine. 

Kyle and Zoe store the myriad of books beneath her bed. Zoe isn’t worried about Madison telling anyone else in the Coven about the books. Madison has shown recently that she could care less what Zoe does with her time unless it has to do with Kyle. 

“Missing?” Zoe asks, sitting down on her bed and enjoying the knowledge that beneath it lies a labyrinth of magic waiting to be revealed. 

Kyle wavers indecisively between them but at the snap of Madison’s fingers, he cross to her. Zoe cringes, the old adage of Madison’s ‘slave’ sing-songing through her thoughts. Madion’s black, perfectly manicured nails, latch around Kyle’s neck and bring him down for a soul sucking kiss. 

Zoe busies herself with smoothing out her bed covers. She puts the scene from her mind, let’s herself remember last night and this morning when Kyle told her he loved her. 

At last, they break apart. Kyle looks dazed and it takes a moment for his eyes to settle on Zoe. When they do, she’s not sure if she imagines the flash of guilt in them. “Nan,” Zoe prompts, 

Madison licks her bottom lip, eyes locked on Kyle. “She’s missing. As in not in the house. The rest of the witches don’t know where she is. But I think we do.”

“Luke?” Zoe says. 

“Yep. So, Cordelia asked us to find her before she ends up rilling that complete bitch Joan into a fit. Unfortunately, Kyle, baby, you can’t come.” She picks up his hand and licks his finger. Zoe purposefully ignores this. 

Reaching under the portion of her bed not crammed full of books, she brings up her laptop. Zoes goes to her bookmarks and finds the English learning site from the day before. She sets the laptop on her bed and her headphones on top of them. Then she opens her closet and gathers up the children’s books too. 

“Keep busy,” she tells Kyle. 

If he hears her, she isn’t sure, because he’s still being ministered to by Madison who is now deep throating his index finger in a display of sheer exhibitionism. Zoe rolls her eyes massively even as her heart sinks down to her toes. She heads out of the room and down the stairs, knowing Madison will follow when she is ready.


	11. Card Games

Zoe can’t be certain, because Fiona has never discussed specific Coven rules with them, but she assumes declaring to a religious fanatic that the Academy is housing a group full of witches, is probably breaking all of the rules. Zoe gets that Nan is desperate to keep Luke alive, proving he’s still around to his mother is one way to do that. It’s also a way to get herself committed to a mental institution. 

Of course, Zoe is the one trying to have a relationship with a dead boy, so in general, their dating repertoire is a little thin. 

“Why are you keeping a boy locked in your room?” Nan asks as Madison drives them back to the Academy. 

Zoe and Madison exchange a look. Nan has a fabulous way of putting things bluntly and there is hardly ever a fabulous way of answering them. Par for the course, Madison’s reply of, “He’s my sex slave,” is not what Zoe would call fabulous. 

“Zoe likes him more,” Nan says, her smile smug. 

Zoe gives her a look. “Get out of my head, okay?”

Nan shrugs. “It’s true.”

“We’re sharing,” Madison cuts in airily. “That means Zoe can have Franken-Boy’s patchwork heart and I can have his boy parts.” She licks her teeth. 

Zoe slinks down in the back seat, wishing her black sweater could swallow her and she wouldn’t have to be here for this conversation. “You can be so vulgar, Madison.”

“Whatever, sex isn’t about flower language, Orphan Annie. It’s about getting dirty - “

“Oh my god!” Nan interrupts. “You had a threesome?”

Zoe wonders if a person can die of shame, because if so, then her time of death is imminent. She fixes her mind on the Academy and the grounds. She doesn’t spend much time in them, but the grounds are actually her favorite part of the Academy. 

If she wasn’t constantly bogged down by bizarre witchy problems, she would spend her days there reading over the magic books she’s uncovered and learn how to be a real witch. One that doesn’t just have to rely on her innate abilities, ones that are manifesting at unexpected times. 

Like this exact moment. Zoe blinks around her, taking in the harsh glare of the sun that had moments before been blocked by the roof of Madison’s car. “I transmutated,” she tells the Academy grounds. She turns in a slow circle. “I actually did it!” 

There’s pride mingled with a healthy dose of shock and a little bit of fear. If there was a handbook for this witch thing, now would be a wonderful time to read it. Zoe shakes out her arms, sparing a moment to be sure she hasn’t splinched herself. Although, since that is Harry Potter thing, it’s probably not a real witch thing, but still. It’s worth being sure that she’s not missing a piece of herself. 

Finding that she’s whole, Zoe allows herself a quick giddy bob of delight and a tiny amount of self applause. 

“What are you all excited about?” Misty’s voice comes to her from the greenhouse. Well, in the sense that Zoe knows Misty is in the greenhouse and it’s Misty’s voice in her mind. 

Focusing on the greenhouse, Zoe tries to recreate the sensation she had just before arriving in the Academy grounds. She starts by picturing the greenhouse in its entirety, then she thinks about the earth spinning unnoticed beneath her feet, then she lets herself be carried away by that motion. 

When she opens her eyes, Misty is leaning across the greenhouse marble slab, smiling at her. “Hey, darling.”

“I did it!” Zoe fist pumps. 

Misty reaches out, tangling a strand of Zoe’s hair around her finger and tugs affectionately. “Look at you, growing into a powerful witch right before my very eyes.”

Zoe laughs excitedly, racing around the marble countertop to grab Misty by the shoulders. “I did it! I did something super witch like and it was really cool!’

Misty laughs, dancing with Zoe. “I’m proud of you, baby girl.”

Zoe hugs Misty tightly for a second. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it.”

In the driveway, the crunch of Madison’s tires warns of her imminent arrival. Zoe takes off for the front yard, wanting to gloat, just a little, to the two other witches. 

As they enter the house, they’re still bickering about what caused Zoe’s sudden ability since neither Nan nor or Madison have demonstrated it yet, when they hear Kyle. Actually hear him, speaking sentences, without sounding like he’s about to swallow his tongue. 

Zoe is speechless, her heart racing about a thousand miles an hour in her chest. “You fixed him?” she asks Fiona. And it comes out wrong, but there’s really no other way to put it. 

Just this morning, Kyle was stringing together one word sentences. Now he’s playing cards with Fiona. If that doesn’t speak volumes to the Supreme’s powers, than nothing does. Of course, Fiona’s answer that she spruced Kyle up as much as she could because they need a guard dog isn’t exactly what Zoe wants to hear. But she’ll deal with that later, right now all she wants to do is talk to Kyle. 

Naturally, that doesn’t go according to plan at all. Madison swoops in, whispering things in Kyle’s ear that Zoe is sure warrant an X-rating, and before Zoe even has a chance to say hello to this new Kyle, he’s trailing after Madison up the stairs. 

Fiona watches them go with disinterest. “See how easily men are led by their dicks?” she says to Nan and Zoe. 

Nan turns to Zoe. “Don’t worry, he likes you more than her.”

“Right.” If this were any other time, Zoe might be rejoicing at this news. As it is, she finds it more than a little hard to believe, since it’s not her bed he’s rolling around in right now. 

Nan leaves her alone in the kitchen with Fiona. “Sit,” Fiona instructs. 

Zoe does as she’s asked and takes the seat Kyle occupied. Fiona deals the cards out between them. 

“You know how to play Go Fish, don’t you?” Fiona asks. 

Zoe lifts her brows. “Yes.”

“Great, then you won’t be a complete failure at this game.” She picks up her pack of cigarettes and lights the tip of one. “Now, explain to me, what is that stitched together boy doing in my house?”

“He died, in the bus crash Madison caused.” 

“Uh-huh, go on.”

Zoe keeps her eyes on her cards, worried about giving something away to Fiona. Fiona, who has never shown any interest in what the girls do. “Madison wanted to try the resurrection spell. When we went to the morgue the pieces were . . . He wasn’t all together.” She can’t make herself say what happened, doesn’t want to relive it. 

“And the spell, it worked, obviously.” Fiona sets down two of a kind from her hand. “Got any fours?”

“Go fish.” Zoe sets down her own pair on the table. “It worked, he didn’t have anywhere to go, so we brought him here.”

“Lie,” Fiona says flatly. “I’ll ask again. Why is he here?”

“Do you have any queens?”

“I am one,” Fiona answers, but hands over the queen of hearts. 

Zoe adds the two queens to her pair on the table. “He wasn’t adjusting well. He couldn’t really just go back home,” Zoe amends. 

Fiona heaves a sigh. “Another lie. I know we are playing a card game, Zoe, but do keep in mind, I’m not playing a game with you. When I ask a question, I expect it answered and I expect it to be answered truthfully. Now, for the last time, why is he here?”

Telling Fiona that Kyle killed his mother is the last thing Zoe wants to do. And knowing Fiona as little as she does, she would bet all of the insignificant money in her wallet, that Fiona already knows about Kyle and his mom. 

“Why do we need a guard dog?” Zoe asks.

Fiona lifts a finely arched brow at her. “Someone killed my last one.”

Zoe thinks of the disgusting, long haired, creep of a butler in the attic. “My father always told me that when a dog loses its bark, it’s time to put it down.”

A thin smile curls Fiona’s lips. She lays her hand of cards flat on the table. “You’re a better card player than I thought.” She pushes up from the table and leaves the kitchen. 

Zoe holds onto her own cards for a moment longer. This house isn’t a Coven of witches, it’s a nest of snakes. With a twist of her hand, Zoe wills the cards into a neat pile in the middle of the table. She heads back to the greenhouse, hoping Misty is still there. She needs a friend.


	12. Black Thoughts

Zoe lays under one of the willow trees in the Academy grounds, flipping through the pages of one of her newly purloined books. She’d sent Nan in to get it from her room in exchange for going back to the hospital with her tomorrow. 

The sun plays through the leaves, dappling the yellowed pages in green and white. The pictures are hand drawn, ink sketches, and watercolors. Zoe drags her finger along the outline of the picture, a witch floating several inches above the ground, sparkling golden lights around her. 

The description of the spell is in a curving calligraphy. The spell itself is in Latin. Zoe reads through the spell, glancing up at the picture. The gold sparks are to illuminate a space that is lost in total darkness. Zoe isn’t sure if that is meant literally or figuratively. The Coven could really use some illumination.

Zoe flips through several more pages until getting to another page that catches her eye. This one shows a female body levitating above a circular design on the floor. The woman’s long blue dress flows down toward the floor. 

Zoe squints down at description, this one written in tiny, spidery handwriting. This spell promises to to bring enlightenment to the performer. The circular design is etched with runes that spell out what it is the performer wants to know about. 

“Zoe?” 

Zoe looks up over her shoulder. Kyle’s face is cast in shadows from the tree. She smiles up at him. “Hey, Kyle.”

He sits down beside her, his knee bumping into hers. “Misty told me you were out here.”

Zoe closes her eyes and listens to his voice. “I was reading,” she says. 

He hums a noncommittal noise, a sound she’s never heard him make before. When she opens her eyes, Kyle has his arms looped around his crossed legs, pulling them in toward his chest. He’s watching her profile, a certain wariness in his dark eyes. 

“Fiona said you’re not all the way back. What does that mean?”

Kyle shrugs. “My memories are still pretty jumbled up. And I can’t - I’m still not fully in control of my reactions. That’s, uh, actually why she chose to help me out. I accidentally killed her original guard dog. I was kind of overeager in my hug.” 

Zoe cringes. “Sorry.”

“Yeah.” Kyle nods. 

Zoe never got as far in her daydreams as Kyle being able to talk with her again. And now that he can, she’s not sure what to say. Things feel awkward a stilted in a way they never were before or after he died. She fiddles with her shoe laces and wishes something would come to mind. 

“Thanks,” Kyle says, “for helping me before.”

Zoe looks at him sharply. “Of course. You wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for me. You shouldn’t be thanking me.”

“You brought me back,” he says quietly. “I got a chance to - “ he doesn’t finish the sentence but his hand reaches out and tugs hers gently away from her shoe. She laces their fingers together. 

“I guess you’ll be glad not to have to use the Learning Frog website anymore?” she teases. 

Kyle huffs a laugh and Zoe thinks it’s the best sound she’s heard all week. “This road goes two ways,” he recites. 

Zoe leans her head against his shoulder. Kyle’s arm goes around her back, cradling her close to him under the willow tree. “I still love you, Zoe.”

“I love you too, Kyle,” she says back, meaning it with all her heart. 

Even though Kyle has the words to answer her, Zoe can’t bring herself to ask if he loves Madison too. If it’s true what Nan said, that he likes her, Zoe, more. If he wants to change what they are doing, stop sharing and start something different instead, he can ask her now. It’s something they had hinted at the night they met. 

But Kyle doesn’t speak and Zoe doesn’t ask. 

Somehow Zoe thought all of this would be easier once Kyle could talk again. But it’s not. Just like finding the spell books hasn’t made being a witch easier. Both have left her with more questions instead. 

Zoe turns so she can stretch her legs out, her head resting comfortably on Kyle’s chest. He combs his fingers through her hair as overhead the leaves continue to sway. “Did we find good books?” Kyle asks. 

Zoe tilts her head up to smile at him. “They look good. I haven’t read through much yet, and a lot of it is way more advanced than I am, but just having them, that’s the real success.” 

Kyle bobs his head. 

Reaching up, Zoe taps gently on his temple. “What’s it feel like up there now?”

The face Kyle makes is not reassuring. “Scrambled? Before is really blurry and right after is a vibrant mess I can’t make much out of. But . . . “ he falls quiet, stroking Zoe’s hair for a while. She waits for him, trusting he’ll finish when he’s ready. 

“In the greenhouse,” Kyle finally says. “That’s when I really started being me again. Those memories are the way they are supposed to be. The gun. Wanting more than anything just to die. Then you grabbing the gun away.” 

Zoe rubs her thumb over Kyle’s bottom lip. It’s soft but dry. “I’m sorry about that too. I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. But the gun. That was a terrible idea.”

“Was it?” Kyle looks down at her. “I had just killed my mother and run off to Misty’s where you found me, naked and freaking out. Getting rid of me was a logical conclusion to those circumstances.” 

“Look at you, Mr. SAT,” she teases, hoping to lighten the mood. 

The corner of Kyle’s mouth twitches up and Zoe counts it as a win. “I’ll have you know, I did awesome on my SATs.” 

“Mmm, big college guy like you. Don’t you feel like you might be taking advantage of little seventeen year old me.” She bats her eyelashes in a way she would never do in real life. 

Kyle grins. “No one could take advantage of you, Zoe. You’re a badass witch.” 

She laughs, stretching her neck up so their lips touch. Kyle leans into the kiss, one hand cupping her chin as he deepens the motion. They kiss under the willow tree as the fall light filters down through the leaves to them.

~*~*~*~

Evening is coming on quick as the various members of the Coven scuffle over dinner. Zoe is heating up microwave macaroni and cheese for herself and Kyle. Misty is producing apples from the pockets of her oversized sweater Iike an actual magician.

“You know you could just ask instead of stealing those,” Madison sneers. 

Misty looks up sharply, her brows creased with guilt. Cordelia edges into the room, one hand reaching towards Misty. Misty takes it, helping guide Cordelia to the counter. “If Misty wants the apples, she can have all of them. And she can keep them where she wants to.” 

Zoe smiles down privately, happy to hear Cordelia standing up for Misty. Kyle catches her smile and narrows his attention in on the other two witches. 

Nan stares mournfully out the window towards Luke’s deserted house. “Madison, Zoe, will you go back to the hospital with me tomorrow?”

Zoe nods. “Of course.”

Unsurprisingly, Madison rolls her eyes. “Once in that sterilized, disease infested environment was more than enough. But since my heart isn’t entirely black, I’ll lend Zoe the keys to my car.” 

Zoe watches as Madison shifts her attention to Kyle. Great, Zoe thinks, an entire day for Madison and Kyle to play naked charades together. As if sensing her concern, Kyle shifts closer, his left hand finding hers. 

“Do I go too?” he asks, bending down so he’s talking just to Zoe. 

“To the hospital?” 

Kyle nods. 

Zoe’s heart warms pleasantly. “I wish you could, because it sucks going, but I think you’re better off here. Not as many people and definitely not as many unexpected variables.”

“Okay,” Kyle agrees. 

The beeper on the microwave rings and Zoe goes to retrieve their food. When she turns back around, Madison has taken her spot next to Kyle, her hand sliding down the length of his thigh. Zoe presses her lips together to keep from saying something catty. 

“Kyle?” She offers him one of the cardboard containers. 

He accepts it and looks around for a place for Zoe to sit. Since there isn’t any, she’s thinking of taking her food out onto the porch. Before she can, Kyle turns his knee out and loops an arm around her waist. He reels Zoe in so that she can sit on his lap instead. 

Zoe isn’t a petty person in general, but she can’t help the smirk she throws in Madison’s direction.

~*~*~*~

After dinner, Zoe goes outside with Misty. “I’ve been feel cooped up,” Misty confesses. “I’m not used to houses with this many rooms and floors. Feels like a prison sometimes.”

Zoe doesn’t necessarily disagree with that assessment of the Coven house so she stays quiet. She lets the sounds of twilight fill in the empty space. The crickets and bullfrogs, cars in the distance and the faint voices of people out for a nighttime stroll. 

One particular room in the house is prevalent in Zoe’s thoughts as she sits on the porch and watches the fireflies with Misty. Sharing anything with Madison has become undesirable in every way. Sharing a bed between herself, Madison, and Kyle is the last thing Zoe wants to do. She wishes she could just ask Kyle where he wants to sleep, but since that could erupt into an all out fight with Madison, Zoe doesn’t feel like pushing that issue tonight. 

Everything with Madison is on such tenuous ground and Zoe can’t believe how quickly things got here. Before, Madison might not have been the nicest person in the house, but she wasn’t the worst either. Granted, Fiona is still the worst since Madison hasn’t actively attempted to kill any of the other witches, but still. 

“It’s a quarter moon,” Misty says, craning her neck upwards to see the moon beyond the roof over the porch. 

“Does that make it more special?” 

Misty leans back on her palms. “Nope. Just a lot of time out on the bayou to spend looking at stars and learning their patterns.”

“Do you miss it?” Zoe asks. 

Misty tilts her head to the left then to the right. “I don’t know. I miss the sounds, the hum of the insects and the chatter in the swamp. But this is nice too. Having so many other people around. Having friends.” She smiles as Zoe.

Zoe smiles back. “Yeah, it’s nice having you here too.” 

“Bet it’s nice having your boy back too,” Misty says. 

Zoe’s smile falls. “Well, we still have a lot to talk about. It’s just hard with everything else that is going on here.”

“The Coven’s a lot different than when I left it,” Misty agrees. “But maybe that’s good. Change is needed to keep things alive.” 

“Somehow, I don’t think Fiona’s version of change is exactly focused on anyone staying alive but her.”

Misty shrugs. “That’ll change. Can’t live forever, not even someone like me.”

“You’ve done a pretty good job of cheating death so far,” Zoe counters. “And you helped Madison slip past it.”

“And you kept Kyle from the hands of fate. Would you do it again?” She looks at Zoe. 

“I - I want to be able to say no.” Zoe speaks slowly, working through her own feelings as she goes. “I mean, what he went through to come back, it was so horrible for him. But I’m so selfish about Kyle. I don’t know why.” She looks earnestly at Misty. 

“Funny thing, love. Takes over and you don’t know when you got so lost in it. At last that’s what Stevie tells me.” Misty’s smile is fond. 

“It is like that,” Zoe agrees eagerly.

“So what’s happening tonight then? You bunking up with handsome and the swamp monster, or do you want to share my room?”

Zoe hangs her head, her long hair a curtain over her face. “Can I share with you?”

“Always, darling.” Misty stands up, stretches her arms above her head, then places a sisterly hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “But you’re going to have to deal with your mess sooner or later.”

“I know,” Zoe says quietly. “I just don’t want to face it tonight.”

“Then we won’t.” She offers her hand to Zoe and helps pull her to her feet. 

Together they go into the house and up the stairs to bed. The door to Zoe’s room is closed, but the light beneath the crack says its occupants are not asleep. Zoe hesitates a moment outside, uncertain. Then a girlish strain of laughter reaches her and Zoe turns away for Misty’s room.


	13. Cold Hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how life sometimes gets in the way? It got in the way.

By the morning, Fiona is in a rare mood. Zoe isn’t sure if yesterday was the calm before the storm, Fiona willing to give them all a sense of safety after the Sacred Taking, but today is a different story entirely. 

She fawns over Misty, reliving Joan’s resurrection and Misty’s own, on an endless loop that is less flattering than it is accusing. Misty shrinks beneath the attention, fitting herself in the corner of the kitchen and then the farthest chair from Fiona in the sitting room. 

Not even Cordelia says anything to her mother. But, from the wistful look on Cordelia’s features, Zoe gets the impression that she wants to believe her mother. Misty being the Supreme would make Cordelia very happy. 

Zoe’s not sure what she thinks of Misty as the Supreme. She’s a wonderful friend, one of the best Zoe’s ever had, but being the Supreme . . . She’s not sure that Misty herself is ready for that. 

It’s a role Zoe isn’t entirely sure she’s wants either. Being charge in that way, responsible for the other witches, being the one who has to guide them through the dangers all around them. How could Zoe be ready when the whole time she’s been here the only training she’s had in being a witch was a walk about New Orleans with Fiona? 

If anything, at this point, the only thing that seems to qualify any of them as Supreme is the manifestation of powers they don’t even fully understand yet. Again, not exactly the kind of skill set that Zoe imagines really endowing someone with the qualities needed in the Supreme Witch. 

So naturally, as she twists the key in the ignition of Madison’s car, the next Supreme is the only topic on either her or Nan’s mind. 

“Do you think it’s really Misty?” Nan asks as she fiddles with the radio. All of Madison’s pre-sets are horrible pop stations that make Zoe feel like her ears are going to bleed. 

“I don’t know,” Zoe say honestly. “I mean, resurrection is supposed to be the rarest gift and Misty came by it naturally, so maybe that’s a sign?”

“Has she shown any other powers?”

“I don’t think so?”

Nan makes a face. “Come on. You spend the most time with her. You would know if she did.”

“Then, I guess not,” Zoe says. 

“If you could choose, who would you want the next Supreme to be?” 

It’s a question Zoe has spent a lot of time thinking about lately. Well, perhaps ‘a lot’ is over estimating it. There hasn’t been a lot of time for anything, really. Except Kyle. That’s okay with Zoe, though. She’d rather be spending her time, any amount of it, with Kyle. He's become her cornerstone of normal in the chaos that surrounds them. 

That, in of itself, says far too much about Zoe’s life. Franken-Kyle is the most normal thing in her life. Misty is second. For the first time since joining the Coven, Zoe wonders if the three of them wouldn’t be better off running away together. Starting things all over on their own. 

But if she has to stay? “You,” Zoe says. “I would choose you. After Fiona, we need a Supreme who is kind.”

Nan’s smile is a full body expression, her shoulders lifting in joy, her eyes creasing, and her smile wide. “I’d make Monday movie nights mandatory,” Nan says. 

Zoe laughs. “That would be awesome.” 

Driving with the giggling Nan, Zoe has a brief glimpse of what their Coven might look like if it were a happy place to be. 

So, naturally, that brief glimpse is shattered two hours later as Zoe is screaming, fighting against Nan’s invisible hold on her as Nan forces Joan to drink bleach. Zoe’s screams so hard her throat hurts. Nan’s power wraps around her like heavy ropes, punishing and punitive. 

All hope for Nan as a kind Supreme vanishes in an instant, but the fear of her actually being the next Supreme amplifies. Zoe has only ever seen one other witch control another person’s will. Fiona. 

By the time Joan is slumped dead on the floor, blood marring her lips, eyes dull and lifeless, Zoe has screamed herself hoarse. Her hands dangle between her legs like a doll, unable to believe that she just watched, helplessly, as sweet, kind Nan, murdered a woman. Viciously. Vindictively. 

Nan circles Joan, eyeing her handiwork with a glint of pride in her eyes. “She didn’t deserve to live,” she tells Zoe. 

Zoe closes her eyes. With Nan preoccupied with Joan’s corpse, her hold on Zoe has slipped. When Zoe opens her eyes, she outside her bedroom at the Academy. Transmutation.

Zoe drags herself to her feet. The world around her tilts left than right, like Zoe’s on a ship that can’t seem to find its even keel. She pushes open the door to her room, everything a white fuzzy noise around her. 

She sees Kyle and Madison romping beneath the tousled sheets of Madison's bed. She sees it but doesn’t connect with it. Her limbs feel filled with sawdust. Her hands reach out, grab the blanket and pillow from her bed. Zoe turns and leaves the room, her blanket trailing across the floor behind her.

She doesn’t close the door. She doesn’t think to. She doesn’t want to think of anything. 

Making her way to the end of the hall, she reaches a hand out, hovering over the handle of the locked door. It turns and the door opens fully for her. She climbs the stairs, the door easing softly closed at the bottom. 

Before she crests the final step, the attic door opens and the pull string light shines to life. Zoe pushes the door shut with her heel. Casting a look around the cluttered space, she finds a single sized mattress wedged length wise up against a corner of the room. 

Eyes focused on the mattress, it slides across the dusty floor to the center of the room. It tips over, landing with impossible slowness. The blanket and pillow in Zoe’s hands leave her grip and settle themselves at top the mattress. 

Zoe climbs onto it, pulls the covers around her like a fortress, and hugs her knees to her chest. “I want to go home,” she tells the empty room. 

“Not my home. Not the house I grew up in. I want to go to a place that can be home. Where I am safe. Where I am not surrounded by death. I want that. Can you give me that?”

The room doesn’t answer. Overhead, the pull string light blinks out and the attic is swallowed by darkness. The only source of light in the attic filters in through the round, slatted window. A milk yellow that barely penetrates the barrier of her blanket. She gives herself over to blankness all around her. She wants to be blank too.

Time passes. Zoe feels cold. It starts in her fingers and her toes. Travels slowly up her arms and legs. It steals around her heart. She blinks in the darkness. 

Midas had a touch that could turn anything to gold. Anything. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story, Midas’s touch even turns his daughter to gold. The Coven doesn’t have a golden touch, it has a touch of death. Anything the Coven touches it kills. 

How close is the Coven to touching her? To killing her? Will anyone bring her back? Would she want to be brought back? 

Zoe grows colder when she feels her tears on her cheeks. She bends her head, resting her face on her knees, allowing her tears to seep into the material of her leggings. “I’m scared,” she whispers, confessing to the attic. 

The attic takes her secret and buries it with the other detritus residing in its space. 

“I’m alone,” she says. 

The attic door creaks open. “Zoe?”

Zoe curls up on the mattress, her knees tucked to her chest. She cries. 

The door shuts. 

Kyle wraps around Zoe from behind, slipping beneath the blanket and covering her cold body with his warm one. He kisses the skin behind her ear. “I’m here,” he promises. 

Zoe cries harder. The Coven kills everything it touches and she brought Kyle back with her into the belly of the beast. She didn’t let him go the first time and now she’ll be punished by having to watch him die a second time.


	14. Secret Safe

Zoe cries until her tears run dry. Kyle sits up, pulling the blanket down from over their heads. He brings her up against his chest, arms locked tight around her middle. “What happened?” His voice is quiet in stilted air of the attic. 

Zoe leans her head back against Kyle’s collar bone. “Nan killed Joan.”

Kyle doesn’t say anything. Zoe isn’t sure there is anything for him to say. 

“She made her do it. Like Fiona can compel people to do things. Nan made Joan pick up a bottle of bleach and - and drink.” Zoe shivers but it’s not from cold. 

Kyle holds her closer. Zoe shakes her head a little. “There was nothing I could do. I tried to stop her and she threw me across the room and held me there. That’s three powers, Kyle. Her clairvoyance, concilium, and telepathy. What if she’s the next Supreme?”

Voicing her fears out loud makes them all the more real. Zoe pictures Nan leading the way down the staircase in her black dress, her sweet smile twisted with malice. Nan deciding who lives and dies based on if their actions defy what she wants. Not killing them with her own hands, but having those against her kill themselves. 

“I brought you here,” Zoe says. “I brought you here because I didn’t know this is where people come to die. But I know that now. Kyle, you should leave. You should get out before this place kills you too.” She twists around in his arms, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders, to hold him in place while she tries to convince him to leave.

Kyle’s thumb rubs over the notches of her spine. “I’m here because you’re here. I’m going to stay where you stay.” 

“I don’t have anywhere else I can go!” Zoe throws an arm out to encompass the dirty, cluttered attic. “But you don’t have to be trapped here. Go with Madison, have her take you back to Hollywood with her.”

Kyle pulls back like he’s been hit. His wild gold curls falling into his eyes as he looks at Zoe. “You want me to leave?”

“No!” Zoe squeezes his shoulders. “Of course I don’t want that. But that’s what is best for you. I want you safe.” She bends so she can rest her head against his chest, holding onto him like a buoy in a desolate ocean. 

Kyle tangles his fingers in the ends of Zoe’s hair. “I love you, Zoe. I’m staying with you.” 

“But you and Madison - “

“I love you, Zoe” Kyle says pointedly.

Zoe turns so she’s cradled in the curve of Kyle’s legs. He wraps an arm around her waist. Safeguarded in his embrace, eye's down cast at his black sweater, she whispers, “I’m scared, Kyle. I’m scared of this place. I’m scared of who the members of the Coven are becoming. I’m scared of what I might become.”

“I love you, Zoe” Kyle assures her.

But Zoe doesn’t know what that means. Who is she to Kyle? What is it that he loves about her? 

“I loved you the night I met you,” she confesses. “You saw me when no one has ever seen me before. There were a hundred people at the party and you saw me. And you were nice, you were kind, you were sweet. You made me feel beautiful and you made me feel wanted. You looked at me from between your fingers and I was in love.”

She rubs her forehead against his shoulder, trying to grind out her frustration. “I know that sounds stupid. I know that it’s not some great, all consuming reason to fall in love with someone. But that’s how I fell in love with you. It’s why I brought you back. Because you didn’t deserve to die and I didn’t want to have lost you before I ever got a chance to be with you.” 

Zoe leans back, looking into Kyle’s deep brown eyes. She could lose herself in them, that’s what she thought when they spoke at the party. And that hasn’t changed. “When you came back, I was so scared. You were - you were wrong. You weren’t you. And I felt so guilty - feel so guilty. I had ruined your peace. But when Misty found us and you chose me again, even when your whole world had stopped making sense, I loved you all over again.”

Zoe takes a breath. This is when she should tell Kyle she’s afraid he will choose Madison over her. This is where she should confess that she wants him to only, ever, always choose her. But it feels like too much. She traps the words behind sealed lips. 

Kyle’s left hand rubs up and down her back, a methodical motion, calming. “Fiona said I’m not fixed. She’s right. There are things I still don’t remember. There are feelings I still can’t control. But I remember you, Zoe. I remember seeing you in those blue and red lights at the party and thinking I had never seen any girl as beautiful as you.” 

Kyle presses a kiss to the top of her head. “I remember waking up and nothing making sense except for your face. Because I knew you and I loved you. Even when I had nothing to connect you to, you still meant that to me. You still meant safe, and home, and love.” 

He folds his legs around her, keeping her safe in the cover of his body. “So wherever you go, I go with you.” 

“I’m scared of what is going to happen, Kyle.” 

“Well,” he says after a long pause, “we’ve got a library of books on witches. Let’s start the way you did with me. We’ll find the easiest one and go from there, right? There has to be something we can learn that will be helpful.”

Zoe smiles, it’s a weak imitation of her usual expression, but it’s better than tears. She curls impossibly closer to Kyle. “Thanks,” she presses a kiss to the fabric of his sweater, “for being here.”

He shrugs. “Where you are is always where I want to be.”

Zoe huffs a laugh. “That is so cheesy.” 

“Hey, cheesy is part of my charm. I think.” Kyle takes Zoe with him as they shift to lay on the mattress, the covers tucked in tight around them. “Was I cheesy before?”

“Kind of,” Zoe teases, thinking about a boy who's super power was gauging thirst. “But I loved you then and I love you now, so cheesy or not, you get to choose who you want to be.”

“You’d make a great motivational speaker,” he says pressing kisses against her neck.

Zoe slots her leg between his and rests her head on his chest. She’s exhausted and her eyes burn from all of the crying. “Just hold me, okay?”

"Okay," Kyle promises.


	15. Quiet Worlds

The sun has set beyond the little slatted window in the attic, but Zoe can’t sleep. Kyle’s expression is peaceful across from her, his brown lashes brushing against his pale skin. His chest rises and falls in even breaths. Careful not to wake him, Zoe brings his right hand to her face. She looks at the red thumbs up tattooed across the center of his hand. 

It wasn’t there before. Not when they first met. But it’s there now, and she can’t help but kind of love it. She doesn’t know the boy who chose that tattoo, who thought something so oddly childish would be a good choice to wear for the rest of his life. But now? It fits Kyle. The way his smile is so soft and so sad sometimes. 

She traces the lines of red with the tip of her pinkie. Tilting his hand up, she presses a kiss across the marked skin. 

“Hey,” Kyle whispers. 

He’s squinting at her, only half-awake. He looks precious and tousled and she wishes they could stay here forever, cosetted in the safety of their blanket fort in the attic. But reality beckons with skeletal fingers. 

Stretching her arm out toward one of the many bookshelves, Zoe closes her eyes and focuses all of her inner thoughts on needing a solution. A ripple of wind answers her call, a thick, leather bound book dropping with a thud off the shelf. 

“Cool,” Kyle says in a dumb voice.

Zoe laughs, shoving his shoulder. “Jerk.”

“No, no. I’m just wowed by your magic. Making books fall off shelves, who wouldn’t want that power.” He waggles his eyebrows at her. 

Zoe has no choice but to tackle him to the mattress. He laughs brightly as she tries to wrestle his arms above his head. It hardly goes to plan and it’s not long before his hands are holding her hips, keeping her steady astride him. Zoe stares down, eyes narrowed, trying to decide what action to take next. 

Kyle’s expressions switches in an instant from playful to awe and when he surges upwards, his hands slip through her hair to cradle the back of her head. Their lips meet in a kiss unlike any they have shared so far. Zoe falls into the feeling, sucking his bottom lip between her teeth, biting hard enough to sting. 

Kyle rolls them over, Zoe now pinned beneath him. He cants his hips forward and she can feel him press against her. She sucks in a scared breath, hands finding his shoulders and holding him at bay. “Zoe?” he asks. 

“I - I’m not ready,” she says. 

She can’t do this with him, not yet. It needs to be just the two of them. No lingering doubts. No shadows in between. 

“Okay,” he says, nodding. “But this is still okay, right?” Kyle bends down, pressing a line of kisses up the column of her neck. 

Zoe’s breath comes shakey. She wraps her arms around his back, fingers pressing sharp points against the planes of his shoulder blades. “Make me forget today,” she says. 

Kyle dips forward, hiking one knee up between her legs. She feels his breath against the shell of her ear as he says, “Close your eyes, Zoe.”

She does.

~*~*~*~ 

“Kyle,” Zoe grouses, batting his questing fingers away from the ends of her hair. The thick tome she had called from the bookshelf earlier is open in front of her crossed legs. Next to her, Kyle is stretched out across the old wood floor, his head pillowed on her thigh. But his hands keep reaching up, distracting her. A thumb rubbing her bottom lip; one finger tracing the shape of her ear; fingertips playing with strands of her hair.

It’s not conducive to a good study environment. But she loves it just the same. She has never been the center of someone’s attention like this before and it is utterly enthralling. Because as much time as she could spend mapping every inch of Kyle’s skin, she knows he would repay her in double. 

Kyle looks up at her, blinking innocently. “You’re so beautiful.” 

“You’re so distracting,” she counters, fighting back a blush. 

He grins at that. 

Zoe flips through several pages, each half written in Latin, and sighs heavily. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. “ 

“Use the force, Zo,” Kyle suggests. 

She deadpans a look at him but it isn’t the worst idea. Lifting a hand above the book, Zoe closes her eyes. She focuses on one thing. On the way Nan had smiled as she killed Joan. 

The pages begin to flip wildly. Zoe has a prickle of anticipation. And then it falls flat. The pages come to a standstill on a water spell, hydromancy actually, for fortune telling through water. It’s not complicated, the ingredients are readily available, and she can read the Latin. But what she doesn’t get is why. 

Looking down at Kyle, she frowns. “Why would I need a spell for deciphering truth from lies?” 

Kyle thinks it over, chewing on the inside of his bottom lip as he does so. Zoe loves noticing these new little pieces of him. Every day, Kyle becomes more his own person. It no longer worries her that he is always going to be missing part of his past. He is growing into a new person which is everything she could have dreamed of after he came back so empty and angry. 

There are still things she wants to ask. Like why he always hesitates a full minute before getting into the spray of a hot shower. Or why the book about the boy and his mom upset him so much. Or seriously what is up with his love for The Little Mermaid. 

And now he can tell her, when she gets around to asking. Which she will, first thing, after they get through at least one day without their lives being in peril. 

Zoe bends down. She kisses the tip of Kyle’s nose, right where her favorite freckle is. Then she sits up and centers herself again, right hand stretched over the book, and wills the pages to answer her. 

Again, the pages flutter to the hydromancy spell. Frustrated, Zoe snaps the book closed. “Maybe I’m not doing it right. I just don’t know - “

Before she can get worked up, Kyle sits up, drawing his knees to his chest and looping his arms around them. “Breakfast. Maybe you need energy.” 

Zoe considers this and when she can’t actually remember the last meal she ate, she agrees. He offers her his hand when she stands and they walk down the stairs with their fingers interlaced. In her left hand, Zoe carrieds the spell book, determined to crack it’s secrets.

~*~*~*~ 

“Zoe!” Misty cries when they descend the second floor stairs. She flies at Zoe, wrapping her in a tight hug that dislodges Kyle’s hold on her hand. “I was so scared.”

Zoe hugs her friend back even as her heart drops to the soles of her feet. “What’s wrong?” she asks urgently.

“Nan,” Fiona says. She’s reclined on the couch, one of her movie star cigarettes curling smoke from its tip. “Drowned last night in the bathtub. Such a pity.” 

“What?” Zoe’s insides turn to ice. “She - “ Zoe shakes her head in disbelief. “No, that’s not possible. I was with her last night. She was fine.” Zoe throws a desperate look at Kyle. 

Misty releases her, falling back to stand beside Cordelia who is staring sightless out the window. On the sofa across from Fiona, Madison sits, looking bored, not a single trace of concern on her face. Myrtle clutches a handkerchief in between her hands, but it doesn’t look as if she’s shed a tear. 

“Well,” Fiona drawls, “she’s certainly dead now. I found her myself.” 

“No,” Zoe repeats, adamant. “She wouldn’t kill herself. Last night she was talking about being the next Supreme. Her powers were growing. She - “ But Zoe can’t make herself voice what might have been Nan’s last act of magic in this world. 

Kyle’s at her side instantly, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and letting her lean against the solid strength of his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says, quietly so only she can hear him. 

“No!” Zoe tells him, angry tears blurring her vision. 

“Get it through your head, Zoe, Nan is dead,” Madison snaps, eyes narrowed at the Kyle’s attentiveness to Zoe. “And tomorrow morning she’ll be six feet under. So no matter what that second rate crystal ball thought she was, it’s obvious now she isn’t going to be the next Supreme.” 

Zoe’s eyes drop to the book in her hand. Hydromancy. The bathtub. Nan. She looks up at Kyle and sees the flash of recognition in his eyes as well. Without a word to the others she turns around and heads for the stairs. Kyle tugs her to the left, though, towards the kitchen. 

“Food first,” he whispers. 

She gives in with a sigh. The despair she felt last night at the unleashing of Nan’s power in a vindictive manner is nothing to the desolation she feels at her loss. The coven has claimed another witch. Its deadly touch slipping ever closer to Zoe herself, or Kyle, or Misty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](Https://www.tate-kyle-kit.tumblr.com)


	16. Black Water

The sudden decision to hold Nan’s funeral is dismal. Another witch cast aside to the Academy and seemingly erased from her family tree. The remains of the Coven surround the casket as it’s lowered into the ground. There’s no suggestion of bringing Nan back. 

Zoe watches numbly as Nan is entombed in the New Orleans soil. Yesterday. Yesterday she was with Nan. It’s a thought that plays on a loop through her thoughts. 

Kyle stands at her side, his hand reaching out to hold hers as Nan is given the briefest farewell anyone has ever had to suffer through. Zoe finds it strange and concerning that Marie Laveau is also in attendance. What interest the Voodoo Queen could possibly have in Nan’s death is entirely unclear to Zoe. 

Madison is as careless about the funeral as she was about finding out Nan had died. She looks more bored than anything. Cordelia looks like, holding onto Misty as if fearing she’ll tumble into the open grave if she doesn’t. 

Zoe wants to leave. There is nothing at this grave. No answers can be gained. The answers are waiting in a bathtub full of water back at the Academy. 

Then Queenie arrives, with a woman on a leash. Because this is what Zoe’s life has become. Funerals and humans in chains. 

“No scars?” Kyle questions. 

It sends an ache through Zoe’s heart. She knows he still hasn’t fully accepted his new body, and how could he be expected to? He’s been sewn together from parts of his former friends. Even the scars she traced through his tattoos aren’t enough to erase what lies beneath them. 

“If I’d done you, you wouldn’t look like you’d been jammed through a blender,” Queenie comments. 

Zoe throws a worried look at Kyle. He doesn’t look upset though, he just looks curious. She reaches back for his hand, drawing him up next to her. He squeezes her hand to let her know he is okay. 

“The most important thing is that you’re safe,” Cordelia says in obvious relief. From just behind her, Misty smiles shyly at Queenie. 

Zoe can’t help the look she shoots Cordelia. Even Kyle looks at her with some reserve. There is not a single thing this Coven has done to suggest it cares about the safety of any of them. 

This emotion is seconded by Fiona who voices, “None of us are safe. Why can’t you understand that?”

With a sigh, Zoe rests half her weight against Kyle’s side. The sooner they leave here, the sooner Zoe can look for the answers she so desperately needs to see for herself. 

~*~*~*~

Seeing Fiona’s face in the water isn’t that big of a surprise. Seeing Marie Laveau? It gives Zoe the chills. For the two most powerful witches to be working together, and neither of them with a sterling reputation for being good people, it scares the hell out of Zoe. 

“But why, Nan?” Zoe asks, looking over her shoulder to where Kyle has crawled up beside her. 

He tilts a look in her direction, but before he can offer any ideas, the click of Madison’s heels break the magic in the room. “What is this? A romantic bubble bath?”

Annoyance flares hot in Zoe. “We’re trying to find out what happened to Nan.”

The roll of Madison’s eyes tells Zoe more than she ever wanted to know. “Don’t you care at all?” Zoe demands, disgusted. 

“Have you met me?” Madison counters. 

And Zoe’s finally had enough. “I don’t think I knew you at all before I brought you back from the dead.” 

“Boo hoo.” Madison follows Zoe out into the bedroom. “Why should I care about Nan being dead? That’s one less witch in the way of being Supreme.”

Zoe whirls around, facing Madison from the small space across the room they’ve shared since Zoe arrived. To her relief, Kyle’s hand reaches for hers, tangling their fingers loosely together as Zoe says good-bye to the first friend she had in her new life as a witch. 

“Misty was right, we should have let you rot.” And Zoe means every word of it. 

Madison flips her off. “Too late now, bitch.” Her eyes narrow at Kyle’s thumb rubbing across the back of Zoe’s hand. With a sound of annoyance, she grabs the headphones and throws them at Kyle. “Sit,” she instructs, pointing to her bed, “Zoe and I need to talk.”

Uncertain, Kyle catches the headphones and slips them on, crossing to sit on the edge of Madison’s bed, eyes on the ground. Zoe’s blood races. “He’s not a fucking toy, Madison. And he’s not a fucking dog, no matter what Fiona says. Stop treating him like one.”

“What’s the deal, Zoe,” Madison says, ignoring her. “We agreed to share him. And then you had to go and fall in love with him.”

“No, I didn’t,” Zoe says, because there is no way to explain to Madison that she didn’t fall in love with Kyle after they brought him back. She’s been in love with Kyle the whole time, and she’d love him whether or not he loved her back. Something Madison could never understand. 

“Oh, right, so you wouldn’t care if I got on my kneepads and blew him right here?” Madison challenges. 

“If he wants it, be my guest.” It’s the biggest risk Zoe has ever taken. Because if Kyle let’s Madison, if he wants it, it’ll break Zoe’s heart. 

Madison drops to her knees with a thud that is audible only to Zoe’s soul. The heavy clunk of Kyle’s belt being unbuckled rings in her ears and Zoe finds she can’t watch this. If she has to watch Kyle give into Madison’s ministrations, it’ll break the tenuous hold she has on her own strength right now. And she needs that strength, for Nan, for Misty, and for herself. 

“No!” Kyle’s angry cry resonates by the sound of Madison being shoved to the floor. 

Zoe’s breath catches as she turns to see Kyle watching her. “I love Zoe now.” The four most beautiful words Zoe has ever heard. 

Kyle wraps his arms around her, and Zoe clings to him, heart thrumming in her chest. Fireworks are going off in her mind, the impossibility of Kyle choosing her. So of course, Madison has to ruin the moment. Her anger boiling over to shatter the mirror.

“You’re such a brat,” Zoe tells her. It’s all becoming clear, in an ugly way, who Madison really is on the inside. Maybe Zoe ignored it the first time around, all those signs of how selfish and cruel Madison was. This time around, it’s glaringly obvious. Zoe’s blinders are off and she doesn’t like what she sees. 

The walls quake under the force of Madison’s rage, the same way the floor shakes when a toddler throws a tantrum jumping up and down.. The pictures fall off the wall. Kyle ducks to the floor. Zoe is ready to tell Madison to fuck off when the lamp lifts off the table. 

Zoe isn’t expecting the lamp to hit her. She’s knocked to the floor painfully. Kyle shouts, “Madison, no!” And then he’s on the floor next to her, covering Zoe’s body with his own. Protecting her. She huddles in the safety of his arms, wishing desperately she hadn’t brought Madison back. Wishing she had learned her lesson, some things are meant to stay dead, even if Kyle didn’t end up being one of them. 

“What is all that racket!” Myrtle shouts, throwing open the door. It takes her a second to survey the scene. After which, she scoffs. 

From there, things blur for Zoe into an exchange back and forth between Madison and Myrtle. Kyle keeps his arms tight around Zoe, one hand clutching hers, the other rubbing up and down her back. She’s scared. 

Not of Madison or what she’s done. But of what this means for all of them. Madison, lost to her own selfish world. Nan, dead. Queenie staying with Marie Laveau. Misty scared of the world Zoe dragged her into. Cordelia broken by her loss of sight. 

Zoe curls herself into Kyle, eyes closed, cheek pressed against the soft fabric of his sweater. She needs more than this. She needs more than the chaos, more than the anger, more than the ever present danger. She needs to feel something more. 

Zoe waits until the other voices fade, until it’s just the two of them in the room. Then she reaches with greedy hands for the sides of Kyle’s jaw. She angles his mouth down to hers, kissing him desperately. Kyle’s hands sink into her hair. She crawls into his lap, presses her hips against his until he falls back against the wooden floor. 

He gasps, pulling back to look at her with wide eyes. “Zoe?”

“I love you, Kyle,” she tells him, meeting his gaze. Her hands trail down his sides, circling around to hold against his belt buckle. She feels a confession bubbling at the back of her mind. It escapes, jumbled up with her need to feel anything but alone and scared. 

“I’ve been jealous of you and Madison. And we should talk about that sometime. Like real adults in a real relationship. But right now, that’s not what I want to do. Right now I want you to remember than you’re mine and I’m yours. You’re not Madison’s. You’re not this Coven’s property.You’re not Fiona’s. You’re not her guard dog, you’re not her anything. You are mine, and you are yours, Kyle. Don’t you ever forget that.” 

Kyle watches her avidly, hands slipping beneath her top to slide back and forth against the skin of her hips. “You make me feel alive, Zoe.”

“Because you are,” she assures him. “You are.” Zoe dips down, capturing his lips against hers and kissing him until her heart is racing in her ears. 

She fumbles with his belt, eventually throwing it to the floor next to them. Kyle shoves at his jeans, and she helps pull them down until they hit his knees. She’s never done this before, but a lot of her time with Kyle has been firsts so it seems rather fitting. 

Her fingers tremble a little as she tugs at the hem of his boxers. Kyle moves to sit up but she pushes him back down with a flick of her thoughts. He laughs as his head hits the floor with an audible thud. “Sorry!” Her cheeks heat up. 

“It’s okay,” Kyle says, his hand sliding against her thigh. “It’s you. So it’s perfect actually.”

Zoe feels herself melt a little bit. Because as cheesy as Kyle is, he always says the right thing. She breathes out slowly, trying to calm her nerves. She looks up at him one more time, “Just, don’t die on me, okay?”

Kyle’s laugh is louder this time. “Zoe Benson, I promise not to ever leave you. Now, please, blow me.”

She laughs a little hysterically before setting herself to her task. 

He doesn’t die. And it’s not exactly what Zoe expected, but somehow that makes it more real. Kyle keeps her grounded, and he chose her, everything else is just confetti.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things.  
> 1\. If you noticed, nothing happened to Misty in the grave yard in the previous chapters, because Misty deserves better.  
> 2\. Yes, the final words are stolen from The Haunting of Hill House because they are incredible. 
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](https://www.tate-kyle-kit.tumblr.com)


	17. Black Tidings

When Myrtle asks to see Zoe after dinner, Zoe isn’t sure what Myrtle could possibly have to say to her. Of everyone in the Coven, the few of them that are left, Myrtle is still the person Zoe has spoken to the least. 

Zoe meets Myrtle in the greenhouse. Kyle is upstairs with Misty, listening to the daily required run through of Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits. “You wanted to see me,” Zoe says. 

Myrtle looks up, her eyes magnified comically behind her lenses, her wild hair a true aura around her face. Instead of clarifying matters, Myrtle hands Zoe an ugly black necklace. It’s frankly hideous, and Zoe has no idea what to say. Luckily, she doesn’t need to as Myrtle proceeds into a vivacious monologue that Zoe only understands pieces of. 

When Myrtle mentions Zoe loving Kyle, she clues back in. “I do love, Kyle. But I’m not leaving the Coven.” She hopes this isn’t some sort of him or us ultimatum, because Zoe has invested too much of herself into the Coven to leave it where it stands now on a knife’s edge. 

“You know the Coven is dangerous to you, both of you,” Myrtle presses. 

“I can handle Madison,” Zoe says firmly. 

“Madison would slit your throat and sleep like a baby. Whatever good was in her was lost the moment she joined this Coven and saw what power looked like shaped by Fiona’s hand.”

“What if I’m the next Supreme,” Zoe counters. 

“Even more reason.” Myrtle's expression is caught between fondness and exasperation. “I know you are aware of this, Zoe, but Fiona will kill anyone in this Coven who she believes she can gain power from. If you truly are the next Supreme, Fiona will murder you without a second thought. And if she doesn’t get to you first, then Madison will happily do the task for her.”

Zoe wants to argue but what is there to say? These are the same worries she has been harboring. Hearing them from someone else brings them to life, like a guillotine hanging over her.

“You have a boy who loves you, Zoe, take that boy with you, and run as far away from here as you can. You are the good in us, Zoe. Don’t lose your light to the darkness of this Coven. And don’t let it destroy that precious love you have found.” 

The words tumble from her lips, her deepest fear. “Kyle loves me because he’s damaged goods.”

Myrtle’s slap leaves her cheek stinging. “How dare you be so unromantic!” 

Zoe holds her hand to her cheek, stunned, and feeling abruptly more clear. Why is she standing her arguing with Myrtle when she has been thinking of leaving for weeks? Of taking Kyle and Misty and leaving this Coven of Death far behind her? Why is she doubting Kyle’s love for her when she is just as much damaged goods as he is? 

“Take these tickets, my necklace, and your love. Don’t look back.” Myrtle hands her a wooden box enclosed with the tickets. Zoe accepts it, holding it close to her chest. Impulsively, she grabs Myrtle in a hug.

Zoe isn’t sure what she’s going to tell Kyle, and she doesn’t know if Misty will agree to come with them, but as she runs up the staircase, her heart is beating like a bird finally free from its cage.

~*~*~*~

“I can’t,” Misty says, her voice quiet. “I’m not like you, Zoe. The Coven scares me, but - I like Cordelia. I think I can learn a lot from her and I’ve never had that before.” She glances up at Zoe, seeking understanding.

Zoe nods, bottom lip bitten red between her teeth. “I love you, Misty. You know that, right? You aren’t alone anymore. And I get it if you want to stay here with Cordelia, but you have to promise me you’ll be careful. That you’ll be safe. Madison and Fiona are not to be trusted. And I don’t know about Queenie anymore. I’m not sure why she’s back suddenly and - “ she breaks off with a quick shake of her head. “Be safe.”

“I will,” Misty promises. Her eyes shimmer with tears. “I’m going to miss you, witch sister.” 

“I’ll always be here,” Zoe says, reaching out and pressing her fingertips over Misty’s heart. “Think of me and I’ll hear you. It worked for us before, when I needed you most, so I know it will work again.” 

Misty catches Zoe’s hand in hers and lifts Zoe’s palm to kiss the tips of her fingers. “Live free, Zoe. You and Kyle, you deserve that.” 

Zoe pinches her eyes closed and wills herself not to cry. When she opens them again, she’s in her room. Kyle is waiting patiently for her, laid back on her bed with a child’s book in his hands. Reading hasn’t come back as readily as speaking had and he’s still working on catching back up. 

He sets the book aside when she appears. “Zoe?” he asks. 

“We’re leaving,” she tells him. “Myrtle says we need to. So we’re going.”

“Where?”

Zoe thinks for a moment and all she can see is sunshine. “Florida,” she decides. 

Kyle doesn’t look certain. 

“Come on,” she urges. “We need to get packed. The tickets Myrtle gave us are for tonight, the nine pm bus. Get your things from the bathroom. I’ll grab our stuff from the closet.” She sets about doing that, flicking her hand at her bed so that two battered suitcases and a stack of books slide neatly out from under it. With another twitch of her hand, the books stack themselves inside the left suitcase. 

Kyle doesn’t make the slightest move towards getting off the bed. Zoe frowns at the back of his blonde head. “Do you want me to do it for you?” she asks, not sure what his hold up is. 

“I love you, Zoe,” he says, each word measured. “But it’s not your decision. I’m not going.”

“What are you talking about?” Zoe asks as her stomach drops to her toes. 

Is this it? Is this the true reveal? Kyle needs to stay here because this is where Madison is? Because he can’t imagine his life with only Zoe at his side? 

“I’m afraid,” he says, the words coming out blurred around the edges and she realizes he’s crying. 

“Of me?” she asks in disbelief, crossing to the bed and crawling on her knees to Kyle. 

“Of me,” he corrects, tapping his chest with fingers that are nearly hidden beneath the length of his black sleeves. “I - I’m scared of me. Sometimes I get these feelings I can’t control and - “ he breaks off, smudging the tears from his cheeks and breathing in through his soft cry. 

“I’m not scared of you,” Zoe says adamantly. She’s not. They have been through so much recently and Kyle has been the only person she could turn to, the only person who protected her. She knows he wouldn’t hurt her, she knows it in her blood. “I’m not.”

Kyle breaks into cries that break Zoe’s heart in two. Her own tears surface and she wraps her arms around him, kissing his temple desperately, needing to hold them together with pure force. “More happy love, more happy happy love,” she says, echoing Myrtle. 

Kyle suddenly grabs the sides of her face and Zoe’s gasps in surprise. His touch gentles at once and he navigates her face to his, pressing the most delicate kiss against the tip of her nose. Zoe clambers onto his lap, locking her legs around his back. “More happy happy love,” she whispers. 

“More happy love,” Kyle agrees in a voice still choked with tears. 

When they separate, Zoe packs for both of them.

~*~*~*~

Their bus ride away from New Orleans is not eventful. They both fall asleep within in the first half hour and sleep all the way until their final destination, a bus station in a run down town called Jupiter.

Zoe couldn’t careless. She stumbles off the bus with Kyle trailing after, both bags in his hands, and searches with bleary eyes for a motel. 

There’s one across the street, a proper shady looking motel, with two rusted out cars occupying the parking lot. She tilts her head toward it, asking Kyle’s opinion. He wrinkles his nose but doesn’t offer any real opposition. 

They jog across the empty street to the motel and head for the front office. Inside, an older woman with short cut grey hair, wire rim glasses, and a sneer, sits behind a plexiglass window. She slides the window open and looks Kyle and Zoe up and down. She pops her gum. “Cash up front.”

“How much for a night?” Zoe asks. She turns her backpack around, digging into the small front pocket for her wallet. 

The woman lifts a brow. “It’s usually by the hour, sweetheart.” 

“We’re staying the night,” Zoe affirms. 

With a hefty sigh, as if this is some great inconvenience, the woman stands up. “Fine. Forty for the night and I’ll show you to a room where the sheets and towels are actually kept clean.”

Zoe hands over two twenties. The woman seems surprised Zoe actually has money on hand. After slipping the bills into the till, the woman makes her way out of the office, a heavy ring of keys jingling from a loop on the belt of her black pants. 

“This way, delinquents.” 

Kyle and Zoe share a private smile. After all, the woman isn’t exactly wrong. Kyle takes Zoe’s hand as they follow after, up a set of stairs to the second floor of rooms. The awning above the hallway keeps the weak early morning sunshine at bay. The railing is pockmarked with peeled off white paint showing the layer of rust beneath. Below them, the rusted hoods of the cars in the parking lot seem to glare up like angry eyes. 

“Charming place,” Zoe whispers to Kyle. He smirks. The motel is the furthest thing from the Academy, not a speck of pristine white in sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Point of fact, I have a few chapters written but not posted. So, this is the start of getting those posted. Thanks for sticking around, if you're still here. 
> 
> [tumblr](https://www.tate-kyle-kit.tumblr.com)


	18. Changing Tide

When they are settled, meaning the front desk woman has left with a final distrusting look and their bags are sitting on the small plastic table by the room’s only window, Kyle and Zoe sit across from each other on separate twin beds. 

“Do you think she has some strong feels about premarital sex?” Zoe asks. 

Kyle laughs, his smile warming Zoe. It isn’t until now, sitting here with Kyle, that Zoe realizes how scared she had been, leaving the Coven. It might not have been a safe place, in fact it was a very dangerous place, but for all of that it was the first real home she had ever had, the first place she had ever really belonged. 

But that’s changed. She can feel that now, as she crosses from her bed to sit beside Kyle, to curl up against him and let him hold her with his arm around her waist. This is home now. The feeling of this boy beside her. Wherever they are, as long as they are together, this is home. 

“I want to take a shower,” she tells Kyle. “I feel gross from the bus.” 

Kyle sniffs her neck. “You smell clean.”

Zoe laughs, pushing his shoulder. “Idiot.”

He grins, then dips in close, licking a line up her neck. “Taste clean too.”

“Ew!” She cries, jumping up from the bed, laughing. “I’m definitely covered in germs now.”

“Zoe, they’re cooties, I would expect a witch like yourself to know the distinct difference.” Kyle stands up, pulling Zoe close with his hands on her hips. 

She smiles up at him, tracing the angles of his face with her eyes. Zoe reaches up, the tip of her finger drawing down the sweeping curve of the brown bruise that won’t seem to fade from beneath his left eye. “I kind of like your cooties.”

“Well, I mean, I have to be honest, I have the best cooties of anyone around." 

Zoe lifts up on her toes, pressing a lingering kiss to his bottom lip, and asks, “Want to take a shower with me?”

In answer, Kyle picks her up off her feet and carries Zoe into the bathroom. 

It would probably be more romantic if the bathroom wasn’t a dingy green tiled room with flickering fluorescent light. But, you can’t have everything, Zoe figures. There are two towels that look more white than grey, and there’s a shower curtain on the shower-bathtub combo, so Zoe’s counting it as more romantic than not. 

This, of course, drops a notch when the shower head won’t work. Hot water gushes happily out of the bathtub spout, but not so much as a drip comes out of the shower head. Zoe rolls her eyes. “Share an incredibly small bathtub with me instead?” she proposes. 

Kyle looks at the tub with the same trademark of fear he’s shown since coming to live at the Academy. Then he looks at Zoe, and she sees the resolve in his shoulders. He reaches forward and turns the water back on so the tub starts to fill up. With a single movement, Kyle pulls up his shirt from the back and over his head, tossing it towards the open door to the rest of the room. 

Zoe follows suit and soon enough, their standing next to each other, shivering a little in the dampness of the bathroom. Overhead, a creaking vent fan fails to suck out the excess of moisture coming from the curls of steam off the water. 

Zoe turns, cupping Kyle’s face in her hands. “Remember, I’m not scared of you, Kyle. I love you.”

He nods, a little stiffly, but when the water is near the lip of the tub, he steps in. 

Zoe waits for him to settle, watching as he shifts back and forth in the water, his brows pursed in concentration. It shouldn’t be this hard, she thinks. “Kyle, I’m coming in,” she warns him. Then she steps in behind him, sits down so her legs stretch out on either side of the tub, and twists her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. 

“I’m going to touch you, okay?” she asks. 

Kyle has become statue still, half out of the water and leaning heavily against the tiled wall. When he gives her a jerky nod, Zoe slowly lays her hands on his shoulders. Then, with gentle movements, pulls him steadily towards her until his back curls against her chest. He knees poke out of the water because there really isn’t enough room for the both of them. 

“Are you okay?” 

He doesn’t answer, as if he’s testing out that very idea. She runs her wet fingers across the breadth of his shoulders, trying to be a steady comfort for him. She trails her index finger up the back of his neck, tugging lightly on the ends of his wild, curly hair. 

Kyle startles and Zoe leans back, trying to give him space. “Sorry.”

Kyle shakes his head frantically. “No - no.” The words come out bitten and forced. He takes a few breaths, turns so she can see his profile, and looks sadly at her. “You are good, Zoe. So good.”

She smiles at him, lifting her hand to brush her thumb against the downward turn of his mouth. “Do you know why it bothers you so much? The bath, I mean?” 

The nod is very slow in coming, but eventually, he tilts his head down, her thumb slipping up to brush against the tip of his nose. “It’s bad. I’m - she. Bad.”

Zoe feels her stomach turn. “Do you want to get out?”

Instead of answering, Kyle turns away and rests himself against her chest. Zoe wraps her arms loosely around his neck so that her entwined fingers rest over the heavy thuds of his heart. Silent seconds stretch into silent minutes. 

“I used to speak French,” Kyle says, his head resting against Zoe’s collar bone. “I keep dreaming in French. And I know the words are right, I just don’t know what they mean anymore. That’s how I feel all the time. I know the language of what is going on but I don’t understand that language any more.” 

Zoe presses a kiss to the top of his head. “I can try and help you translate, if you think that would help.”

“The bath,” he starts, “it’s bad. Or not that this bath with you is bad, but that baths, in the past, they were bad. They were bad things and bad things happened to me in them.” 

She can feel Kyle tensing up beneath her. She flashes back to the melt down he’d had at Misty’s. The water sloshing onto the floor, the butt naked Kyle wrecking everything in sight. Zoe tightens her hold, enough for him to feel the pressure of her arms around him. She’s trying to reassure him that he’s safe, and she can only hope it works. 

“Bad things,” he mutters. “My mom - “

Pieces slot into place and Zoe wants to rip them back out. The pieces do not belong in that picture, not for Kyle, not for anyone. Kyle's blood spattered face, his mother’s face beaten to a pulp. That stupid book about the boy and his mom. 

“Kyle?” she asks, her voice dropping with fear.

“From when I was little,” he says and all of a sudden, that honeyed accent he’d had the first night she’d met him is back. “She would - and I never told. I never told anyone. Because she was my mom. And I hated her for it. At least, I think I did. Or I do now. And no one knew -“

Kyle rocks back and forth in the water, creating a malstorm of tiny waves around them. Zoe just keeps holding on to him, hoping to provide him a safe harbor. Tears glisten on her cheeks, but right now, she thinks Kyle needs her to be strong for him. 

“And she tried to again - when you - when I was there. With her. And I just - I snapped. I - “ Kyle’s voice chokes, his shoulders drop as he covers his face with his hands, muffling his cries. 

Zoe curls over him, her warm, naked body, trying so inefficiently to keep him safe from everything outside the two of them. “I’m so sorry, Kyle,” she says, pressing kisses to his back, desperate, loving kisses. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. I’m so sorry I left you there. I’m so sorry, Kyle.”

With an abrupt turn, buckets of water slosh over the side of the tub, but Kyle is safely cradled in her arms now. She holds him as tightly as she can, keeping all the pieces of him held together, the way she couldn’t the night of the crash. She whispers a litany of apologies, mixes them with statements of love, prays that it’s true that love can mend a broken heart.

~*~*~*~

The water is cold by the time they leave it. When Kyle’s tears had abated, Zoe lovingly washed his hair and then his body. She tended to him the way she wanted to when he first came back. He returns the gesture, even if he does get caught up in washing her hair over and over until Zoe is laughing and pushing him off.

Standing together in the hotel room, bodies wrapped in towels, hair dripping, Kyle turns to Zoe with a look that says, “Now what?”

And Zoe doesn’t have a clue. She pads over to the bed and gestures for Kyle to join her. He does. They sit cross legged, knees touching, on the center of the bed. His towel is folded at his waist, hers is tucked in against her chest. 

“What do you think will happen with the Coven?” Kyle asks. 

A shiver runs down Zoe’s spine. “I really don’t know. I’m scared. For all of them.”

“What do you think is going to happen to us?”

Zoe smiles. “Us? We are going to live happily ever after. In a cottage. By the sea. And every morning we will wake to the sound of seagulls and every afternoon we’ll take long walks on the shoreline and every evening we’ll count the constellations in the night’s sky.” 

Kyle’s hand winds its way from her wrist the back of her neck, beneath her wet tangle of hair. He anchors her close, his mouth presses hungrily against her soft lips. Zoe sucks at his bottom lip, as desperate as ever to consume everything that is Kyle. He is a fire beneath her skin that never weakens. 

By the time the towels come untangled and Kyle wrestles the bed sheets over them, Zoe’s gasping for breath, one hand outstretched toward the hotel door as she casts a panted protection spell. Her other hand finds its way securely down between Kyle's legs. 

Kyle grunts, caught off guard. Zoe flashes him a grin. “Make me see stars, Kyle.” 

He slides down the bed, hands strong and sure on her hips, his mouth kissing his way down her inner thigh. Zoe closes her eyes tight and gives herself willingly over to the constellations only Kyle can show her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://www.tate-kyle-kit.tumblr.com)


	19. Morning Light

They wake up to the rumble of a legion of buses pulling out of the station across the street. Zoe rolls over until her head is pillowed on Kyle’s warm chest. She kisses his skin, listening to the steady thud of his heart beneath a chest that is not his. 

They can’t stay here, and Zoe wouldn’t want to even if it was an option. A musty motel room is hardly the place she wants to call home. But she’s not sure where they should be heading either. She had thought about the coming days a lot on the bus. One of the things she couldn’t help but fixate on is that there have to be other Covens. Other witches. 

Should she find them? Search them out? Would they take in a killer and her resurrected boyfriend? 

First, though, they need money. And as nice a gesture as Myrtle’s ugly relic of a necklace was, Zoe wouldn’t even know how to begin turning it into cash. Thankfully, her funds aren’t tied to the overly large beetle shell of jewelry. Having parents who foisted her off didn’t mean that had cut her off financially. She has a well padded bank account that she can withdraw from as they go. 

Next, there’s the issue of mobility. Zoe draws a symbol of protection on Kyle’s chest, blows on it until she sees it shimmer golden. 

Some of the spells are surprisingly easy. Especially the ones for protection. No extra ingredients needed, just belief and the right hand swish. Unsurprising that Fiona chose not to teach them any. It wouldn’t have served her purpose for the girls of the Coven to be able to protect themselves from her. 

She props her head on her hands to look up at him. “Kyle, how old are you?”

Kyle squints down at Zoe. “Strange time to be worried about me robbing the cradle.” 

Zoe laughs. “No, you doofus, it’s not about that.”

“Doofus,” Kyle muses. “I don’t think the frat had burns that sick.” 

“Jerk,” Zoe complains. She straddles his waist and sits up, running her fingers over the rugged scars connecting him together. She drops her head, sucking kisses along the stichmarks of his neck, overlaying the wound with a necklace of red bruises. 

“Twenty,” Kyle answers belatedly. “And I thought you were a witch, not a vampire.” 

“I’m a delight, is what I am.” Zoe sits up, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a flick of her head. “But we’re still going to need to tamper with your ID before we can hit the road.”

“Tamper with my ID?” Kyle sits up, cradling the back of Zoe’s waist with his hands so she isn’t dislodged. “Having an ID in general is beyond me right now.”

Zoe stretches her hand towards her backpack and it obligingly sails through the air to land neatly next to her on the bed. Flipping her hand over causes the backpack to open itself and her wallet to levitate into the palm of her hand. She opens it, rifling through until she pulls out two driver’s licenses. 

Hers reads Zoe Benson, age 19. The next card reads Kyle Spencer, age 21.

At Kyle’s look of interest, Zoe shrugs. “Madison knows a guy.”

“Should I have some covert name now? Instead of the one belonging to a dead guy with a murdered mother?” He says the words without pause, but she can see the strain at the corners of his eyes. 

Even knowing how he grew up, Zoe knows it can’t possibly make it easier for Kyle to reconcile what happpened to his mother when he came back. What he did to her. Zoe’s proud of Kyle, though, for braving his way through his new truth. 

There isn’t one of them in the Coven now who hasn’t killed at least one person. She hopes that’s not a trademark of being in a Coven, and rather an unfortunate stain on the one she currently calls her own. But, there is no doubt that being bonded by the biggest sin a person can commit fosters a bond unlike any other. 

“Well,” Zoe starts, not certain how Kyle is going to take her opinion on matters, “I might have tampered with a few things.”

Kyle frowns. The thumb that had been rubbing soothing trails against the skin beneath her t-shirt stills. “What things?”

“There are a lot of Kyle Spencers in the world,” Zoe says slowly. “I might have asked for Fiona’s help in adjusting the world so that there was one more. She has a way with the police department, and it was easy for her to worm around the system until there was a brand new Kyle Spencer born and raised in the 9th Ward. He didn’t get a scholarship and he didn’t go to college, and he certainly never died in a horrific bus accident.” 

She stops to see how Kyle is taking all of this. He’s watching her raptly, but all of his emotions are locked behind that mask of stillness he wore when he first came back. It scares her, but Zoe has always believed that the truth will set you free, so there’s no stopping now. 

“This new Kyle Spencer has two parents who unfortunately died in Hurricane Katrina. He’s been living at the Academy ever since.” Unease bubbles beneath her skin. She hadn’t thought about it at the time. It had seemed the only solution when she proposed the plan to Fiona. 

Fiona, who never did anything for free, had required a certain favor in return. That favor being Kyle staying on indefinitely as the Coven guard dog. It was an exchange Zoe made with no intention of keeping. She didn’t doubt that eventually she would have to pay for that deception, but in the meantime, she was giving the issue a blind eye. 

“Why twenty-one?” is all Kyle asks. 

Zoe rolls her eyes in an attempt to outweigh the blush on her cheeks. “You have to be twenty-one to rent a car. I just thought - you know - if we ever needed to escape, it would probably be good if we could rent one legally instead of hot wiring a ride.” 

A weak smile curves Kyle’s mouth. 

She waits him out. Around them, the motel room seems smaller and dingier than ever. Zoe can’t wait to leave it behind. She’s still not sure of the ultimate destination, but the first step towards getting there is renting a car. 

“Are you mad?” she finally asks. 

Kyle seems to think this over, his head tilted slightly to the side. “I’m not anything, really,” he eventually says. “Who I was before is a memory I feel fading every day. That life, that family, the dreams I had? They’re like leaves in winter, brittle and crumbling.”

Zoe wants to make a joke about Kyle being a poet, tease him out of his melancholy mood. So much of their time together has been colored by that certain shade of magenta that Zoe has always associated with melancholy. So little to be truly happy about, so many things to worry about, so much to be afraid of.

She doesn’t want that for them now. This is supposed to be about them getting away, starting over, becoming the green bud of a leaf on a spring tree, in Kyle’s words. Right now, it doesn’t feel that way. 

“Your dreams don’t have to rot, Kyle. We can make them happen. I will find a way.” She bring his hands around to hold in hers, clutching them as if she feels him drifting away from her. 

He looks up at her, his eyelashes brushing against his over long bangs. “More happy love.”

“More happy happy love.” She kisses the tip of his nose. 

“I started a new life when I woke up and saw you. I guess it’s fitting I have the history to prove it now. And maybe this Kyle will have the better life anyway.”

She squeezes his hands. “We’re going to have the best life together, Kyle.”

He smiles, a true one. “I believe you, Zoe. So, where am I driving us in our rental car?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://www.tate-kyle-kit.tumblr.com)


	20. Asphalt Kisses

They zip down the highway with the windows open. It’s cooler in Florida than it had been in New Orleans and they both have sweaters on to keep out the chill, but they can’t keep themselves from rolling down the windows, letting in that fresh air and warm sunshine. 

The map in Zoe’s lap has a twisting yellow line drawn in highlighter that will supposedly navigate them to the Everglades. The guy at the rental car office had looked bored as he traced it for them, listing off in a monotone the numerous types of wildlife they could see there. 

Zoe wasn’t all that interested in the wildlife, though. She was interested in the seclusion, in the plant life she could acquire for any spells she might need to perform. Kyle was interested in leaving the traces of city life behind. He still isn’t certain of his own restraint. 

Zoe tilts up her sunglasses to check the map for their next leg of the ride. “The exit should be coming up in another twenty miles or so.”

Kyle nods to show he’s heard her. He reaches out, fiddling with the radio, turning through several channels before pushing it off again. He taps his fingers against the wheel, the cuffs of his sweater still pulled over his palms. 

It makes him look vulnerable, that simple excess of fabric. And Kyle is so very fragile in Zoe’s mind. She wishes she could protect him from everything out there in the world that could ever hurt him. He’s already been hurt by so much she couldn't protect him from. 

The funny thing is, Kyle seems to want to protect Zoe too. She’s never had that before. Her parents always trusted her enough to keep her at an arms length, never worrying that Zoe might make the wrong decision. She had, in the end, with a boy dying in her bed, but even then, her parents trusted her. Sent her off the Coven where once again they believe Zoe would make the choices that needed to be made to keep herself safe. They had been wrong again, naturally. 

So it was a novel thing to have Kyle watching over her so fiercely. Keeping her close enough to shield with his body, lashing out to keep others from getting too close if close means she might get hurt, but still keeping enough distance that Zoe could protect herself as well. 

It was novel and it was more magical than anything Fiona had taught her at the Academy. That two people could trust and love each other enough to protect without smoothering, to love without suffocating. Zoe lifts Kyle’s right hand from the wheel and presses a kiss to each fingertip. 

Kyle grins in her direction, taking his eyes off the road for a moment. He runs his fingers through her hair, a sign she has come to know as his silent ‘I love you.’ 

“What are you thinking?” she asks. She rest her head back, turning to face Kyle’s profile. She loves the straight line of his nose, the smooth curve of his lips. 

He glances at Zoe, then back at the road. 

“Tell me,” she encourages. 

He wets his bottom lip with his tongue. “Why were you jealous of Madison?”

Zoe blushes “You really have to ask?”

His shoulders lift a fraction of an inch and Zoe realizes she’s accidentally touched a nerve. Some things are easier for Kyle than others, but this conversation is not one of those things. “Explain it to me?” he asks. 

Zoe chews her bottom lip, thinking of how best to put how she felt from the moment Madison came roaring back to life by fucking the boy Zoe had inadvertently fallen in love with. The boy she had so desperately hoped loved her back. “Have you ever seen two people and thought they looked good together? They looked like the kind of people who should be together, who would be happy together?” 

Kyle shoots a look in her direction. “Sure, maybe?”

Zoe smiles shyly, grateful he’s willing to hear her out. “When I saw you at the party, you only had eyes for me. And that was the greatest feeling, like I’ve told you before.” She pauses, remembering after Madison came back, when she walked into their room, with Kyle having just thrown his oatmeal to the floor. 

“But . . . when I saw you and Madison together, in our room, the two of you, you looked like the kind of couple that would be happy, that would fit together. And that scared me a lot. Because you had just come back and you didn’t remember things from before. So who was to say the person you were now still thought I was the only girl in the room?”

Kyle’s brow furrows as he drives, eyes not leaving the road, but it’s clear he is hanging on Zoe’s every word. 

“But I told myself we had a connection. You had reached for me when you were scared. It had to mean something, right?” Thinking about what comes next still makes Zoe’s stomach drop, so she says it as quickly as she can. “But when I came back upstairs - I saw you. I saw you two, Kyle. You hadn’t been able to get even a sentence out to me, but with Madison - with her you were comfortable enough to - “ 

She breaks off. Not really wanting to have to say what she saw. Kyle’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel, turning his knuckles white. She wants to soothe him, run her hand over his hands and tell him it’s okay. But it’s kind of not. Because these are ugly memories and she doesn’t want to be sharing them with him, but Kyle asked, and she will do anything for him, even relive this. 

“So. I was hurt. And I was jealous. You clearly felt comfortable being with Madison in a way I wasn’t even sure I could be with you and one I definitely didn’t want to be with you until you were more yourself and I could explain about - well, about my ‘special gift.’” She air quotes the words as she says them. “But that wasn’t a problem for you and Madison, so I was jealous.” 

“But after,” Kyle says, his voice unusually quiet for him. “When it was the three of us.”

Even the mention of that night sends a blush burning through Zoe’s cheeks. “That was a mistake. Not being with you,” she hurries to say, “but the three of us. I would never do that again. I wasn’t comfortable. But I so desperately wanted you to want me the way you wanted her that I was willing to compromise my own boundaries to have that with you.” 

“Zoe,” he says, still in that quiet, self-conscious voice. 

She cuts him off before he can say more, needing to get this all out in one go so hopefully they can put it behind them once and for all. “And after that, I was still jealous. Because Madison could so easily give you what you seemed to want and I couldn’t. And the way it was so easy between the two of you, when I felt that I had to earn every touch, every look, that I had to find my way back to you and vice versa, but you and Madison had something else that I couldn’t begin to compete with - “

“Zoe,” Kyle groans. “Zoe, no.” He shakes his head. 

Zoe feels the car turning as Kyle maneuvers them onto the shoulder. He clicks on the emergency flashers and turns the key off. Then he twists in his chair to look directly at her. “It was never that, Zoe, never.” 

“Okay,” Zoe allows. “Then what was it?” 

“Zoe, you were the sun. You are the sun. Without you, there is no light, there is no warmth, there is nothing for me to grow towards. There were no words I could say to tell you what you meant to me, that without you everything was dark and cold. That I felt useless and stupid when I was near you because you were this beautiful unattainable thing and I was a star blinking out in the vast dark sky.” 

His words give her chills, a feeling that chases up and down her arms before settling in her heart as a racing beat. 

“Madison knew what it was like to be that cold and lost. She was the moon, giving me this dim light even when she couldn’t warm me up. But together, we could create heat, not the kind the sun provides, not the kind that gives life and joy, but the kind of heat that sustains you when you’re on the edge of freezing to ice.” 

Kyle frowns, his mouth pressing to a thin line. She gives him time, knowing he still has to work his way through his words sometimes. “You wanted to know why I was weird about the Little Mermaid - “

“Not weird,” Zoe interrupts quietly. “I liked that you liked it.”

He shrugs this aside. “Ariel, she couldn’t tell Eric who she was or where she came from or what she was. And that was me with you. I couldn’t tell you anything I needed you to know. I couldn’t tell you all the important things that would let you know how important you were to me. But I could tell Madison what I was missing, how cold I was, how empty. But when Fiona fixed me, when she gave me back my words, I wasn’t in that dark place any more; I could be in the sun, with you, all the time.”

“But even after that - “ Zoe hedges nervously. 

He smiles weakly at her. “Figuring things out, figuring out that I didn’t have to live for that little bit of heat I could make with Madison, it took a while. But then I saw what was happening. I saw that by gaining those few sparks, I was leaving streaks of grey clouds over you, over my perfect sun. And that’s when it clicked again. What it meant to be in love with someone, to be in love with you. It meant I didn’t need anyone else. I’m so sorry you were jealous, Zoe. But there was never anything for you to be jealous of, because it has always been you. You have always been my sun.”

Zoe doesn’t have words, and even if she did, she knows they would all seem inadequate. Instead, Zoe snaps off her seat belt and launches herself onto Kyle’s lap. He catches her and cradles her against his chest. She captures his face between her hands and sets about kissing the holy hell out of him.

~*~*~*~

By the time Zoe and Kyle get to the Everglades, Zoe has been reviewing her high school French with Kyle, trying to see if it will help jumpstart his lost words. No sparks yet, but she tries to encourage him not to give up.

“Why are you so invested in this?” he asks with her a sly smile. 

“Well, of course, it’s because I think you’d sound as sexy as hell speaking French.” She licks her bottom lip and winks. 

He laughs, throwing his head back. Zoe watches with a bright heart, loving how his nose wrinkles up when he really lets himself laugh freely. She wishes he looked so free all the time, but knows that until Kyle can learn to trust himself, that isn’t going to happen. 

Zoe navigates them through the winding outskirts of the Everglades, leading them ever closer to the quaint Bed and Breakfast she booked for them while they drove down. When they pull up to it, it is precisely the Addam’s Family replica she had been hoping for. 

Kyle’s eyes scan up the gray facade, complete with a turret, and gives Zoe a look. “Do you feel up to invoking a lightning storm so we can arrive in style?”

Zoe grins. “I’m a witch, Kyle. I can’t just stay anywhere. The cheerful pink bedspread could clash with our chosen all black fashion statement.”

Gravel crunches beneath the tires as they turn up the curving driveway. Kyle plucks with his free hand at his black sweater. “At least we both look good in black,” he teases. 

“Thank god for small favors,” she agrees. 

They park in a spot marked for guests. When they step outside the car, the weather decides to provide its own small favor and the clouds open up, letting down a current of rain. Kyle and Zoe shout and laugh as they dash for the front door of the Bed and Breakfast. 

It’s a new day and a new adventure. Death isn’t hanging over their shoulders. The Coven is far from Zoe’s thoughts. Or so she tells herself.


	21. Ever Green

The Bed and Breakfast is run by an aggressively grumpy older man with greying hair and piercing blue eyes. The room they are staying in hasn’t received a decent dusting anytime this decade, and every piece of furniture is markedly dated without the classiness of being an antique. Zoe is thrilled, Kyle can’t stop laughing.

When the owner has left with a final snarl not to get any ‘fluids’ on the sheets, Zoe collapses back on the bed in a fit of giggles. A plume of dust rises like a cloud at the impact and Kyle tries his best to bat it away, all the while coughing. Giving up, Kyle crawls up the bed to hover over Zoe. 

“Want to mess around, fluids and all?” he proposes with a waggle of his eyebrows. 

Zoe wraps her arms around Kyle and pulls him down into a smothering kiss. There’s probably a spell she can learn to clean up any and all fluids in one of those heavy books of hers stored safely in her battered suitcase. 

It’s only after they have surfaced for air an hour later, that Zoe turns her thoughts to the Coven. They had left without a word and Myrtle’s instructions had been to cut off all contact with the Coven. Zoe never intended to follow that rule. 

So, with Kyle asleep, his head pillowed on her stomach, Zoe stretches her mind out toward Misty’s. 

At first, all Zoe can hear and feel is the sense of waves in the ocean. But eventually, she feels a light press, like moth wings, against her mind. Zoe presses into the feeling and in return strains of Fleetwood Mac work their way into her thoughts. Zoe smiles, easing away from Misty. Everything on that front seems safe. 

With a flick of her fingers, Zoe calls for the guide map of the Everglades that Carl, the B&B owner, had grudgingly given her. It lands softly on the bed next to her. One hand running through Kye’s hair, Zoe holds the map with her other hand, perusing the markers and shades of green for her best chance at finding what she’s looking for. 

Within the hour, Zoe and Kyle are piled back into the rental car. Zoe has has the guide map overlaid on the road map, slowly navigating them towards the park. It’s a winding path, and reminds her vividly of driving out to Misty’s. 

Old memories surface, though calling them old is a stretch of time not by minutes but by moments. Kyle looks in her direction and asks, “Is everything okay?”

Zoe looks up, startled to find that she had been deep in not very pleasant thoughts. “I’m fine.”

“You didn’t look fine.” He takes one hand off the steering wheel to tap at the crease between her brows. 

She rolls her eyes, a smile at the edge of her lips. “Okay, well, I’m still fine. I was just thinking.”

“Of things that make you frown.”

“Yes, Mr. Pendantic.” She slouches down in her seat, legs curling up towards her chest. “I was thinking of before.”

Kyle reaches over and pushes her legs down. “In case we crash.” He says it offhandedly, like it’s a causal everyday concern, not one that probably lurks at the back of his thoughts every time they get in any moving vehicle. 

Zoe appreciates the concern though and straightens herself properly in the passenger seat. She laces her fingers through Kyle’s before he can grip the wheel in the ten and two positionvagain. He drives one handed just fine, his left hand hanging low on the steering wheel, the way her mother always warned her would lead to swerving if there was ever a reason to panic. 

“Before what?” Kyle asks. “Before coming here? Before the Academy? Before Fiona fixed me?”

Zoe lolls her head to the side, looking Kyle up and down. “You know she didn’t really fix you, right? Some wires might have been scrambled but we would have figured it out eventually. You would have figured it out, Kyle. Fiona just helped the process along. Don’t think you owe her something, or the Coven, or me, or Madison, or even Misty-“

“Hey.” Kyle lifts their entwined hands and kisses the back of Zoe’s hand. “You don’t have to fight all my battles for me, even though it’s very chilverious that you want to. I’ve got a body of pieces put together, it’s poetically fitting that my ability to function like a person again would be thanks to pieces of help from different people too. It’s okay.”

“Still.” Zoe shrugs her shoulders. 

She worries about Kyle. Obviously, she doesn’t think anyone has missed that memo. But there’s a lot to worry about. She worries that he doesn’t see himself as a full person. That he’s always going to be relegated to a secondhand life in his secondhand body. Kyle Spencer was not born to walk this world as someone’s guard dog, someone’s slave, someone’s toy to be fixed. She wants him to know that, to really know it, deep down in his bones. But there are somethings you can’t make a person know just by telling them. Somethings have to be learned firsthand. 

“So, before what?” Kyle asks, redirecting their conversation. 

Zoe makes a face. “Before Fiona.”

Kyle nods slightly. “What about it?”

“Why did you run? After I came for you at your house. After your - after you mom?”

Kyle falls quiet, following the curves in the road with gentle nudges of the steering wheel to the right and left. He sighs. “I was scared, I think.”

“Scared of what?”

“Not really of what I had done,” he admits. “That was something that felt inevitable. There was so much anger. And I was so scared of that anger. Of her. Of what she had done to me. And it just came out. And after it was done, it was just done.”

Zoe squeezes his hand, wanting to remind Kyle that she’s there for him and she’s not going to judge him for anything he’s done. After all, Zoe killed the frat boy. He might not have raped her, but he raped Madison and that was more than a good enough reason for him to die. 

“But when you found me . . . It was like I had forgotten about you until you were suddenly there again. And then you were this huge ball of light and warmth that I wanted to be near, but you were scared. I could tell you were scared of me. That scared me too. And the longer you stayed, the more scared you became. It just hit a fight or flight response, I think, so I fled.” Kyle explains himself slowly, as if he is working through the thoughts as he says them aloud. 

Zoe appreciates the effort. It’s not an easy time she’s asking him about. And, she feels his confessions deserves one in return. “You were right to flee.”

Kyle gives her a sharp look from the corner of his eye. The cant of his brows says he’s waiting for her to continue. 

“Your mom kept rat poison in her kitchen cabinets. When I was making you food, I found it. I put it in the food. I wouldn’t have been able to give it to you, when it came down to it, but it was the first time I thought seriously about what I had done. I had raised you from the grave and I hadn’t been able to gaurantee you would be okay. Obviously, you weren’t and I didn’t know about your mom and -“

“Zoe,” Kyle cuts her off. “I forgive you. If you even need to be forgiven. I was a monster, when I first came back. You weren’t wrong to be scared and you weren’t wrong to try and -“

Zoe reaches over and slaps her hand over his mouth. She doesn’t need to hear the rest of that sentence. She doesn’t want to talk about this anymore, even if she was the one to bring it up in the first place. “I love you,” she says. “I loved you then and I love you now. The rest, it doesn’t matter.”

Kyle kisses her palm and she drops her hand. “Okay,” he agrees. And together, they close that chapter of their lives forever.

~*~*~*~

Dappled sunshine comes down between the boggy air of the Everglades. After parking, they had hiked for an hour, more off the trail than on, and Kyle keeps startling at the cracks of wood as they tromp their way towards where Zoe feels a pull of energy.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, stopping to let Kyle catch up from where he has drifted behind her. 

“The Spanish moss,” he says, pointing it out as it drapes above them. “It’s giving me the creeps.”

“I like it,” she says. “And I’m sure Misty would be sincerely upset to hear you slandering her swampy aesthetic like that.”

Kyle grins. “Okay, I’m also very worried about alligators leaping out and eating our legs. These are my second pair of legs, Zoe, I’m not ready to have a third set.”

She laughs suddenly at his comment. “Oh my god, Kyle! Are you really - “

“Hey, if I’m going to spend the rest of my life as Raggedy Andy, I better find it funnier sooner than later.”

“Nothing about you is raggedy,” Zoe assures him. She steps back over a log to stand in front of him. Pressing up onto her tiptoes, she sneaks her fingers down the collar of his black sweater, fingertips tracing over the bumps of the scar that links his chest to his neck. “I love all the parts of you and all those parts are sexy as hell.”

Kyle huffs a laugh, his hands rounding her hips to settle at the small of her back. “Are you really flirting with mein a swamp that smells like rotting mud, if that’s a thing?”

“What? Are you saying you don’t find me appealing in these circumstances?” Zoe tilts her head, kissing a line down his neck, then, hand pulling his collar out of the way, kissing along the line of his scar. 

Kyle shivers, his arms drawing her tighter up against him. “Is this the plan? Build a cabin in the swamp like Misty? Live out our days with pet alligators and sex beneath the hanging moss?”

“Would that be so bad?” she asks, half serious. 

“Not with you.” Kyle dips his head and kisses Zoe soundly. She smiles into the kiss, arms coming up to circle around his neck. 

Kyle drops down and scoops up Zoe’s legs, settling them around his waist instead. Zoe gives a little shriek of laughter. “Oh my god, I don’t think anyone has picked me up since I was on the volleyball team in junior high.”

Kyle twirls her around. Zoe drops her head back, letting her hair fly in the breeze created by their movement. “You’re like a bag of sticks. Practically pocket sized.”

“Shut up! Super human strength was gifted to you, otherwise -“

Kyle openly scoffs at this rationale. “Okay, Miss Adventure, you tell me what odd looking flower we are looking for and I’ll take you there.” He shifts Zoe around, with some help on her part, until she is secured to his back, piggyback style. 

“That way,” Zoe points, resting her head against the side of Kyle’s. His hair is soft; it smells like the cheap shampoo from the hotel and Zoe breathes in a happy lungful. Zoe honestly can’t remember the last time she ever felt this happy and content. Maybe Myrtle was right. Maybe running away together is the best choice they could have made.


	22. Chapter 22

Zoe spends a good hour picking plants, flowers, and stones that have magical properties. Kyle stores them all in the nondescript black backpack thrown over his shoulder. As they wander through the trees and damp undergrowth his hand strays towards hers every now and then, fingertips brushing against her palm. 

Zoe turns to him with a smile. “Bored yet?”

He shakes his head. “I do think it’s going to rain soon, though.”

Zoe peers upward. The overcast sky is mostly covered by leaves, but here and there she can see a patch of threatening dark clouds. For some reason, the idea of rain, or even a thunderstorm, makes Zoe feel elated instead of nervous. 

Catching the look on her face, Kyle smiles with a frown. “What are you thinking?”

“That this is nothing like what I thought my life would be like.” She opens her arms wide, twirling in a circle. The black sleeves of her chiffon sweater billow around her like wings. The wind picks up, just in the small space she occupies, and sends the leaves on the ground in swirl around her, above her, when they reach toward the sky, she calls them back down in a scattering of confetti. 

Zoe laughs happily. She turns on her heel and throws herself into Kyle, who catches her readily in a hug. He kisses the tip of her nose. “You’re so beautiful when you’re happy.” 

She buries her face against his chest, breathing in the smell of him. 

Kyle props his chin atop her head. “What did you think your life would be like?”

Zoe sighs, gathering herself closer in his arms. “Boring. Stale. Like my parents. I never fit in. I didn’t care, it was just a fact. I made friends who didn’t fit in and we were okay with that. But my parents were social butterflies. Always at these awful business events, plastered fake smiles, and horrible corporate laughter. My dad had some big shot job for a law firm and that was my future. Little Zoe Benson was supposed to grow up and be Little Lawyer Benson, just like her daddy.” 

Exhaling, Zoe turns around and Kyle settles his arms around her waist, her back to his chest. “Finding out I was a witch, being cast aside by the family? It was honestly the best thing that happened to me. Suddenly, that entire life was gone in a puff of smoke. And there’s no going back to it. My parents see me as a blight and at first, that scared me, but now? Here, with you? With Misty? I’m not scared anymore. The future looks bright for the first time.” 

Kyle is noticeably silent behind her. She feels the steady beat of his heart, but she thinks if she could hear the sound of his thoughts they would be racing. 

“How was your life supposed to turn out?” she asks, when the silence stretches on too long.

She feels Kyle’s chest expand against her back as he breathes in deep. “I was going to save the world.” Each word is coated in self-reproach and Zoe can’t stand it. 

“How?” The pit of her stomach twists, after all, if Zoe and Madison hadn’t barreled into Kyle’s life, that dream would still be on the right track. 

“I wanted to be an engineer. I was going to fix New Orleans. Make sure what happened here during Katrina could never happen here or anywhere else ever again.” Kyle stretches out his arm, rolling up his sleeve to expose the four leaf clover bisected by Zoe’s scar. “I had a whole speech about never getting a tattoo, that way when I stood before the type of corporate asshole who sneered at me when I was growing up, he wouldn’t be able to find a single shitty reason to throw me out of his office before hearing everything I had come to tell him.” 

Zoe rubs her thumb over the tattoo. “That dream doesn’t have to be dead, Kyle. You can still make it happen.”

“I’m dead, Zoe. That life is dead too.” 

“No,” she shakes her head. “It doesn’t have to be. We can put the pieces back together. Pull the right strings to get you back in college where you were before - before you died.” 

“Zoe,” Kyle sighs. His hands are gentle on her shoulders as he turns her around to face him. “Spells and magic can’t fix everything.”

“I know,” she starts, but he cuts her off with a finger pressed against her lips. 

“Let’s leave it for now. I want this to be a happy memory for us and talking about this doesn’t make me feel happy.” He tilts her chin up, kisses her lips softly. 

“Okay,” Zoe agrees, but she stores this conversation for a future date. Kyle deserves the world and Zoe knows she has it within her power to give it to him.

~*~*~*~*~

In a place where no one knows them, they take pleasure in stopping at one of the cafes in town and ordering lunch. There’s no worry here of someone seeing Kyle who might too closely see the resemblance between him and his former living self.

They play footsie under the table, and ignore the dirty looks thrown their way when they kiss across the table. Here, they can be young and in love, just like Myrtle said. 

Which is why, Zoe keeps trying to keep the prickle of worry she feels at bay. The worry that all is not right back at the Academy. 

Kyle, for his part, is not fooled by her facade of ease. When they get back to the B&B, he helps her organize the items collected in the forest into neat compartments in the wooden mini curio that Zoe stole from the attic at the Academy. 

“Have you tried reaching out to Misty since we left?” he asks. 

“The first night, yes, and everything was fine. But it’s not Misty I’m worried about.” 

Zoe fiddles with the compartments of the curio. She tucks each leaf, petal, and stone carefully away. When there is nothing left to do, she drifts towards her spell books. She runs her hands over their thick spines, selecting one at random and carrying it over with her to the bed. 

She lays down on her stomach, flipping through the pages of the book idly. Kyle joins her, laying on his side so he can study her face. She keeps her eyes studiously down on the book. 

“Are your witch senses tingling?” he asks. 

Zoe huffs out a laugh. “That’s stupid.”

“But it gets the message across,” he says flippantly. 

“Yeah . . . I guess they are.” 

“Then, tell me about it. I’ve been told I’m a really good listener.” He blinks up at her, his face the picture of earnest interest. 

“I’m not the only witch here,” Zoe says vaguely. “I can feel the presence of other witches around this . . . area? Land? I’m not sure. I mean, it’s not like they are staying at this exact Bed and Breakfast with us, but they are close enough that I can feel their energy. And if I can feel their energy, then they are able to feel mine too, right?”

Kyle thinks it over, dark eyes never leaving her face. “What’s it feel like?”

Zoe closes her eyes, giving herself over to the strange tingling pressure she’s felt all day. It presses up against her cheeks and neck. The barest brush, like a moth’s wing. Inquisitive awareness. 

Zoe shakes off the feeling. On her arm, goosebumps race down her pale skin. “They know I’m here.” 

Kyle lifts a brow. “Is that a good or bad thing?”

“I’m not sure.” Zoe takes a breath and says what has been lurking in the back of her mind all day. “But, I want to meet them.”

Kyle sits up. “Is that safe?”

“I think . . .” Zoe makes a face, trying to organize her thoughts. “Okay, so, not all Covens can be like ours, right? Because even our Coven wouldn’t have survived if it was always as blood thristy as it is now. And if Gabby can slide from the Coven to the Voodoo Queen, then that kind of means there have to be other groups, right?”

Kyle tries to look reassuring but falls short of the mark. “I mean, I think it makes sense,” he offers. 

Zoe sighs, tapping her fingers against the open page of the spell book. She looks down at it. The picture shows a witch sitting the middle of a purple circle. Inside the circle is a large blue triskelion. The witch has both hands palm up and above her, in smoky clouds, are the faces of different women. 

Below the picture is a simple incantation and the ingredients needed to make the designs. The spell doesn’t have a name and it doesn’t have a description, but something about it calls out to Zoe. She pushes the book to an angle so that Kyle can see it too. 

He looks up at her. 

“I want to try this spell,” she says, realizing it’s true as the words leave her mouth. 

“What’s it do?”

She smiles. “I’m not sure, but I’m trusting my witch senses right now and they are telling me that this is what I need to do.” 

“Then we do it.” Kyle curls his body upward and stretches his arms over his head. “So, what do we need?” 

The flowers they have collected prove useful for the incantation. There is the obligatory blood sacrifice that has Zoe cutting a line down her palm. When everything is in place, the wooden floor of the B&B glimmers an iridescent haze of lavender and peony. 

Across the circle, Zoe meets Kyle’s worried eyes. “I’ll be fine.” 

His smile is crooked. “I have no doubt.” 

Zoe takes a breath and steps across the shimmering line. Immediately, her head is filled with a soft hum. It blocks out all other sound and the shimmering lavender cloud blocks Kyle and the room from view. 

Zoe sits down on her knees in the center of the triskelion. She holds her hands up and whispers the words written in the spell book. Once. Twice. Three times. 

The lavender and peony crystals explode outward, replacing the room with a clear golden sphere. Zoe looks above her. North, her mind supplies. Her North Star is the Academy, covered in overgrown vines with rotting wooden siding. 

She looks to the left. Her past. An ebbing river of dark crimson. It sloshes up banks of tar black. 

She looks right. Her future. A single white lily rests on a small field of green grass. 

Zoe reaches towards the lily. It spins delicately, lifting from the grass with dangling roots cloaked in soil. A chorus of voices, whispers overlapping, replace the hum in her ears. “Once chosen, a path cannot be broken. One home is forever the dynasty of family.” 

Zoe leans back and the lily settles itself into the ground once more. She looks at the river, she doesn’t want to touch it. Still, she reaches one hand toward it. 

The river splashes against the sides of the black banks. A spray of blood speckles Zoe’s hand, warm and thick. The chorus, harsh and cawing, tells her, “What you were given was a gift to destroy. With creation comes a price, heavy as the hanging sword.” 

From the river, heads then shoulders emerge, drenched in blood. The whites of their eyes are staring and accusing; Spalding, the frat guy, her ex-boyfriend Charlie. Zoe screams, trying to yank her hand away from the river but she is held in place by an invisible force. 

Charlie blinks at her, blood dripping languidly from his lashes. “Full circle, Zoe. Everything comes full circle. To create, first you must destroy.” 

Like a snapped rubber band, Zoe’s hand jerks back to her chest and the dead submerge themselves once more beneath the surface of the river. 

Shivering, Zoe tilts her head back and raises both hands to the Academy. The voices of Nan, Queenie, and a hundred other girls long gone from the Coven, roll over one another to create a thunderous voice the shakes Zoe’s very bones. 

“Where have you gone, sister?” they demand. “What fate have you left us to? Why have you forsaken us? Come home before there is no home for any of us.” 

A bolt of lightning breaks through the Academy, leaving Zoe to watch in horror as it catches fire, crumbing to ash in seconds. Zoe screams out, try to bring back what is gone, but there is nothing left, only ashes on burnt grass. 

With a piercing shriek, the glowing haze around her collapses. The sounds and light of the room rush back to her senses. Zoe gasps for breath, sitting upright, not aware that she had been prone on the floor. Her hands and arms are smeared in the powdery residue of her circle. 

“Zoe?” Kyle’s voice is tight with fear.

She turns to him. The bruise swooping beneath his right eye looks more pronounced than ever. Except it’s not, all of the colors look oversaturated to her right now. She breathes in deep, picking up on the scent of dust and mildew that clings to the wallpaper and floors of the room. 

Zoe closes her eyes, trying to regain her balance. 

“Hey.” Kyle lifts her gently by the arm, steering her to her feet. Zoe let’s her weight rest solidly against his side. 

Kyle ushers Zoe slowly toward the bed, sitting down first to pull her into the v between his legs. “How are you feeling there, witchy woman?”

Zoe breathes slowly and deeply. Her head tips back against his shoulder. From this angle, she can see the straight lines of his nose, the way his lashes are such a light brown as to seem hardly there at all, the smooth pink curve of his mouth. 

“Whatever you saw, we are in this together, Zoe. I know I was afraid, but I’m not afraid anymore.” He strokes a hand down her back. 

Zoe closes her eyes. She lets what she saw and heard roll her thoughts like a storm. When the debris has settled, she rests her forehead against the curve of Kyle’s throat. “There’s only so long we can run, Kyle. But the Coven is always going to call us back.”

“So what do you want to do with the time we have left?”

“More happy love,” she whispers. Her lips seal over the fragile curve of skin between his neck and shoulder. She bites a mark there.


End file.
